Take Care Of Yourself
by NothingPretentious
Summary: When an infant Harry is rescued from the Dursleys to be raised by his Were-uncle Moony, his Godfather Lord Black, and his time-turned future self, the biggest question is obviously... who gets to be the daddy?  T for language, otherwise safe.  ON HOLD.
1. A week and twenty years

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter one: A week and twenty years**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

_When infant Harry is rescued from the Dursleys to be raised by his Were-uncle Moony, his Godfather Lord Black, and his time-turned future self, the biggest question is obviously... who gets to be the mommy?_

* * *

This is a fun time-travel fic. Violence, but no explicit adult themes. The fic features sensible extensions to the uses of canon magical objects. In general it will be lighthearted, but this first chapter has a grimmer tone than the rest of the story, so don't judge it too early.

* * *

_**Sixteen years after Monday**_

"Oh Merlin, it's over. It's over, Harry! We're saved!"

"Come on, Harry. We've got to go. Word's spreading."

Something blurry swam in and out of the darkness.

"Come on Harry, mate, you've got to get up. The bastard wasn't bluffing. We've got to find a portkey out of here while there are still any left."

"Harry! Harry, I've got to find my parents, I'll catch you up."

The young man's world whirled dizzyingly, and he retched for the umpteenth time that day.

"You okay there, Harry? Look, lie down. We're getting you out of here before those _things_ show up. People are saying they're almost at Hogwarts."

Blissful darkness, and then echoing voices again.

"You're up? Good. Hermione made it, Harry, her parents too. We're in France. The healers will be round to see you when they've seen to the wounded and checked nobody's carrying the infection. No, don't try to sit u-"

Shadows ate up who knew how much time. He could make out vague shapes amongst them.

"I'm sorry, Harry. They had the service yesterday. The healers insisted on keeping you under. I- I know Ron and Charlie and Molly will understand."

"Oh, God. I'm so glad you're okay, Harry. I- I recovered his portrait."

A familiar beard, long and white and strangely out-of-focus. Feelings for this beard had been forced into the distance. No, feelings about the beard's _owner_. Harry tried to remember who it was.

"I don't know if anyone told you the news, Harry... they went ahead and just _wiped it clean_. The muggles burnt the whole country to the ground. The quarantine was working, those ungodly things were confined to the land, but then they went and dropped their atom bombs anyway. Can you hear me, Harry?"

"Please talk to me, Harry. Look, I brought you some soup..."

An excited face, for the first time in – how long?

"Harry, try to focus. I know you can understand me. I just discovered that – that there might be something we can do."

* * *

_**Twenty years after Monday**_

"You have the veritaserum? And the polyjuice?"

"Yes, Hermione."

"And the pepper-up? Oh, and the healing potions? The half-teaspoon of phoenix tears?"

"Yes, yes and yes, Hermione."

"You've got my portrait case, right?"

"_Yes_, Hermione."

"I know, I know. I'm just nervous. Are you really sure you want to use _that_ wand to do the spell?"

"Yes, Hermione. It'll be useful afterward, and I can always ditch it if I'm worried."

"Fine. Where are the primary rune stones?"

"On the sheet behind you, Hermione. Can I finish the circle now?"

"Yes, of course. Here, I'll hammer the outer runes in. Oh! Do you have your time turner?"

"Of course, Hermione."

"Don't roll your eyes at me. Fine, if you've got everything... Um. I guess I'll be seeing you, Harry. Well, I mean, _I_ won't be, but-"

"Yeah. I know. Don't look so upset, it's only the last couple of weeks you'll be losing. Listen, don't worry, I'll let you and the Old Man out to play as soon as I get to Godric's Hollow."

"Haha. Right. Goodbye, Harry. Good luck. Oh, and... _take care of yourself_."

"I will. Goodbye, Hermione. _Vicis ianua_."

There was a flash of bright blue light, and then only one person stood in the room for the fraction of a moment before the universe disappeared.

* * *

_**Monday**_

A wan young man appeared from thin air, looking suddenly drained as he dropped an inch to the ground.

Blue light crackled around his body for a moment, forming strange shapes in the air before dispersing. He immediately stumbled, sinking to his knees and shivering violently. The strange leather pouches strung about him clinked and clattered.

Slowly, he raised his head disbelievingly to the summer sun. He was standing in a vineyard. Cows browsed placidly nearby, not giving his sudden appearance a second thought. A small, old villa stood against the horizon. The rural scene was improbably picturesque.

"I'm _back_, baby."

His voice was cracked and hoarse with effort. His fringe flicked across the faded scar on his forehead as he spoke.

The young man fumbled for a tiny bottle and slugged back its contents, then shook his head briskly and managed to stand upright, wisps of steam curling from his nostrils and ears.

He grinned up at a strange sky, a sky not shrouded by dust, and let out a cackling whoop.

Then his knees wobbled and he stumbled a little more. He turned quickly on his heel and disappeared with an echoing _CRACK_.

The cows continued to graze.

* * *

_**Tuesday**_

The tiny amount of light that drifted in through grimy windows from the late evening sky blinked out as a new shadow appeared in the room.

"Damn it. _Lumos_."

A bright light played across various shapes, bringing their silhouettes into sharp relief.

The man was looking considerably more chipper now, the dark circles under his eyes reduced to crow's feet. He had changed his robes for dark-coloured muggle clothes, and a faint aroma of spearmint suggested his body was currently running on pepper-up.

"Ah. The guest room. Well, that'll do."

Shuffling footsteps and distracted muttering were audible from the hall, and getting closer. The young man nodded to himself and waved a casual hand. The wand _thrummed_ with power. Golden symbols drifted in the air, to settle in the door and walls. Light winked across the floor and ceiling, sealing out the whole world.

The dark-haired youth flicked his wand rapidly, and objects shattered all across the room, some bursting into shrapnel, others twisting into tiny compressed clusters, many burning with clouds of foul smoke and ethereal shrieks. Soon there was little left in the room but the bed and the wardrobe.

"That felt good. _Scourgify_. Argh, um... _Scourgify maximus_."

He stood back to regard the clean and bare room with some satisfaction, then unpacked several scaly mokeskin pouches onto the bed. Faint but furious mumblings could be heard from behind the wards on the door.

A different voice rang out from the bed. "Remember, you'll need the stuff on your list _before_ you go and fetch him."

"Right, right. Be back soon."

The scene shifted abruptly, and the young man stood outside a chemist shop in a quiet little street. The CLOSED sign hung in the window.

With a little metallic noise, the lock came off the door, and he slipped inside, whispering something at the alarm above the doorway.

Five minutes later he stepped outside again, hands full of medicines, baby supplies, skin cosmetics, and a small bottle of chloroform. As an afterthought, he nipped back into the shop and snagged a bag of sherbet lemons from the counter.

A minute later, half of a huge yawn hung in the air, cut off by the young man's sudden disappearance.

* * *

_**Wednesday**_

Emerald green eyes looked up into emerald green eyes. The larger ones stared down in curiosity and mild concern, wrinkling up at the corners as the young man smiled.

The child, thumb in mouth, regarded him solemnly.

Gentle hands picked him up, stroked his hair and balanced him carefully on a hip, and the man stole away into the night without a single glance back.

Far away to the north, an old man roused suddenly from a light doze as the instruments on his desk went haywire. They were reporting a fiftyfold spike in the magical core of young Harry Potter, followed by his sudden disappearance.

That was worrying. What was worse, nobody other than the usual four inhabitants had been detected in the house.

* * *

_**Thursday**_

"Yes, that's right. Master Regulus was a brave, good man. Stand back, please, Kreacher, and we'll finish his life's work."

The dirty house elf's crusty eyes lit up, and he let go of the ugly piece of jewellery, capering about in manic glee. Meanwhile, Harry raised his wand, scowling.

"_Avada kedavra_."

The snake-embossed amulet before them squealed, its two halves fluttering in panic, before the sound withered in the air.

The pendant stilled, and a ghostly grey-green vapour flowed from it, spitting and hissing in the air. A flick of the wand and it faded away into oblivion.

All that remained was a metal locket, slightly warped by the curse's impact.

The house elf gave a groan of ecstasy and stopped short in his capers. He fell on his back and kicked his arms and legs spasmodically, continuing to moan.

Harry averted his eyes, lest a tea towel flop aside at exactly the wrong moment.

"Right, thank you, Kreacher, enough of that. Now, please clean the master bedroom thoroughly, and tell me when you're done so I can move the cot in there. Once you're done there, move on to the rest of the house. I won't be able to bring you a new Lord Black to serve until you have!"

* * *

_**Friday**_

The rat snoozed in the sun on the window sill.

If somebody had been nearby, and bothered to squint one eye against the light and blink the other rapidly, they might have noticed something. There were faint patches of broomsticky air, concealed by a ghostly disillusionment charm, directly outside the open window.

Above the invisible broom, two hands appeared from somewhere. One was empty and promptly darted out to grab the rat, bringing it to the other, which contained a rag.

The fat little vermin woke abruptly, opening its mouth to squeal, then relaxed, eyes drifting shut again. The hands vanished, tucked away beneath a patch of invisible space.

A moment later, the broomstick disappeared even more.

Harry appeared in a slightly dank room, and noted that the rubble was already gone from the floor. Several of the stuffed monkeys in amorous poses on the sideboard had been washed and combed. There was even some sort of doily on the carnivorous coffee table.

He looked down at the unconscious rat in his hand, wondering aloud exactly how useful a security ward was if it kept out stunning spells but let a Death Eater live in your house for several years.

He transfigured a sturdy cage, and stuffed the rat inside. Then he dug a small bottle out of one pocket and a black quill from another.

* * *

_**Saturday**_

A man, carrying a baby in his arms, knocked at a door. A werewolf answered, then clutched at his heart in shock.

Two men looked at each other for a moment, both ravaged by fatigue and the marks of old violence.

The werewolf's eyes, wide with surprise, kept going from the dark-haired baby to the dark-haired man and back again.

Fifteen minutes later, the younger man left, lighter by one bottled memory, one photograph and one confession signed in blood. Similar documents had been mailed out at dawn to foreign newspapers and the International Council of Wizards' committee on international law. Those packages would be arriving soon.

The young man apparated to the Daily Prophet office to drop off copies of the same documents, then arrived at the Ministry of Magic with a heavily-chained sleeping Death Eater and yet more Pensieve memories.

A dirty nappy combined with a brilliantly-engineered coffee spill led, quite fluidly, to the youth's escape. He smiled and shook a little tension from his shoulders, glad to be once more outside the whirlwind of bewildered questions and stupid assumptions.

Thousands of miles away, in the inkiest uncharted metaphorical slums of the North Sea, an emotional werewolf helped a nervous guard row a small dinghy towards a dark, forboding island fortress.

* * *

_**Sunday**_

Harry put his feet up on the end of the sofa, knocked the end off a flagon of pumpkin rum with a severing charm, and relaxed.

"I'm glad you got here okay – and _you_ got here okay – but there are still things you should be doing," said a voice from inside his shirt.

Harry fished out the locket and mock-glared into it, trying to keep the smile off his face. "Come onnnn, Hermione, I'm right on schedule. Besides, you're two-dimensional. You don't know how badly that twenty-year jump messed up my body. If Madam Pomfrey was here she wouldn't hesitate to prescribe me six months bed rest, or maybe a coffin."

The tiny portrait within the locket frame huffed, and went blank. A moment later the young woman's face appeared on the much larger canvas by Harry's feet.

"You should be preparing for when Sirius gets out," she said.

"Hmmm, I suppose you're right." Harry sipped thoughtfully at the broken pottery lip of the bottle. "This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I have two decades of future knowledge, an infant version of myself, access to the man's home and he should be a bit disjointed from reality after a year in Azkaban. I'm going to need the _mother_ of all pranks to make the most of these resources. Ideas?"

"Harry! I _meant_ getting your cover together, preparing your finances..."

"Hermione, I love you, but if you don't let me get at least a few hours' rest I'm going to go glue you face-to-face with Old Mrs Black."

"Well, maybe you should go to bed instead of getting drunk and preparing to prank Sirius."

"I need some downtime as much as anyone. Listen, just this week I've travelled back in time twenty years, precision-apparated from France to England, broken into two magical houses and two muggle stores, kidnapped a two-year-old Hero of the Light and probably pissed off a two-hundred-year-old one, destroyed a seventh of Voldemort's soul, won over a house elf, dealt with a young version of myself without causing any paradoxes or giving in to the urge to drop me on my head, and, um, justified the mass-murdering criminal who betrayed my parents."

"What? 'Justified'?"

"I couldn't think of a word for 'brought to justice' that didn't sound stupid."

"So you picked 'justified'?"

"Yeah okay, shut up. Oh, _and_ I learned how to change a baby."

The coffee table near his feet had a shiny new axe embedded in it. Propped against the handle was a second large portrait, which chuckled.

"Well done, my boy," said Albus Dumbledore, beaming at him. "Well done indeed."

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ Thanks for reading! Please leave a review, my brain chemistry gives me some sort of bizarre high when I read them!


	2. Homemaking

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter two: Home-making**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

Harry finished bespelling the wallpaper of the ground-floor hallway, making it a hypnotising pattern of frolicking scarlet lions on yellow fields. He'd already traversed the carpet with his wand out, leaving a pleasant motif of pink pastel socks in his wake.

The young wizard looked about in satisfaction. He'd decided to clean Number 12, Grimmauld Place by working methodically from room to room, creating safe areas. This should nicely complement Kreacher's entirely random cleansing ministrations. He'd watched, at one point, as the elf whipped himself into a frenzy of erratic dustpan action, then stopped to run in and out of rooms with a ladder and a bucket of wallpaper paste, only to return to sweeping two minutes later.

In the half an hour since he'd started cleaning, Harry had used six different curse-detection charms. And he wasn't even out of the entrance hall yet.

A swish of his wand, and the tally reached seven. He hummed, considering the troll foot umbrella stand in front of him. On the one hand, it was unrepentantly hideous. On the other hand, it was a conversation piece, and it had no dark magic on it. Judging by the silver-banded pearwood inlay, it was probably quite valuable, too.

A flick of his wand and the huge hoary toenails on the thing became a deep rose-pink. It would do for now. When he could show his face in the wizarding world, he'd hock it.

Then he looked up, and narrowed his eyes. Something had to be done about _that_.

* * *

Harry rudely jerked back the portrait's curtains, causing the narrow-faced lady's eyes to bulge out. "_Who_ are you? This _man_ I've heard about from the elf? You claim _you_ will bring a Lord Black back into this household? Speak up, boy!"

Harry sneered slightly at her. "Who am I? Madam, I am both a half-blood _and_ a blood-traitor."

The portrait's eyes bulged even further, and colour splotched across her pale cheeks. "What? _What_? Are you _taunting_ me, you loathsome worm? How _dare_ you set foot in this house! You disgusting, _worthless_, know-nothing SCUM!" The voice began to shake the eaves, and Young Harry broke into matching wails behind him.

Harry just smiled. "Know-nothing? I beg to differ, madam. I know several things. For instance, I know the difference between a Permanent Sticking Charm and a Permanent Impervious Charm."

* * *

_Bing_.

Harry was on a roll. _Bing_.

He took careful aim again, and transfigured the last iron gas lamp into a crystal vessel in the shape of a lion's head. _Bing_. Young Harry gurgled a laugh and clapped his hands together at the sight.

Later Harry would see about getting some will'o'wisps to put in the heads, making permanent lights for the hall. He left the large crystal chandelier as it was, but added a warm pink tinge to the quartz crystals so it didn't clash with the new décor.

He had decided to go for 'garish Gryffindor', thinking it would make a nice change from the current decorations in 'subdued Slytherin', all dark snakes and silver fittings. Sirius could change it to whatever he thought was appropriate, once he was in his right mind.

Harry paused to paint golden zigzags on the skirting board with a flick of his wand. He liked to think he was opening up whole new realms of tastelessness, ripe for architectural exploration.

The ground floor hallway opened into a small vestibule, to either side of which lay the dining room and the library. On the back wall stairs went up to the higher floors, and a slightly more rickety flight coiled around down to the cellar and kitchen.

Harry stepped into the dining room, which Kreacher had actually kept in fairly good condition, compared to the rest of the house. The Black family silverware had been polished so much that it shone.

Harry put down the makeshift playpen he was carrying, and stared absently at the open fireplace. "Have to see about getting the Floo reconnected," he said aloud.

"I'll add it to the list," Hermione's voice said from his open collar.

Still, despite the house elf's efforts – Harry pointed his wand carefully – _that_ table was too dark, _that_ wall was covered in mildew – oops, a little too much power there, but now at least he had an excuse to conjure some nice wood panelling... and then there was the dresser, of course.

Fortunately, he had been through all of this once before. Without the benefit of magic the first time, it had taken _weeks_ of (admittedly lacklustre) effort. He approached the wooden drawers of the dresser carefully, wary of the hordes of spiders that had infested it in the future.

Of course, the current present – the present present, perhaps – was a decade and a half earlier on the timeline. Regulus, the last Black to live here, couldn't have been gone much more than three years. In fact – Harry frowned – it was actually surprising how filthy the house was already.

After all, an old pureblood family like the Blacks wouldn't have lived in squalor. Nor would they, no matter how dark, no matter how wizardishly lacking in common sense, have lived amongst objects this dangerous. Only a family of Aurors could have lived here without serious accidents.

So... presumably Kreacher was bringing things in over time to make the house _worse_.

Well, that certainly explained the beartraps. Harry's initial exploration had turned up quite a few of them, steel jaws set, under beds or on chairs. He'd questioned Kreacher about them, but got nothing more than incoherent mumbling about family tradition and filthy muggles. In the end the elf had loped off to spring the vicious serrated traps and bundle them away somewhere.

Since then, Harry had been keeping his younger self particularly close.

Harry investigated the dresser carefully, finding only one nest of spiders, in the bottom of a drawer – perhaps some sort of seed population being bred by Kreacher. Harry flicked his wand to Vanish them, then transfigured the dresser into a simple set of open brass shelves. Against his better judgement, he left the family china and silverware with the horrible Black crest where it was. Sirius would have a good time throwing it at things.

Finally, he concentrated hard, and transfigured the chairs. They had been dark wooden things with clawed feet and grotesque eagle-snake-things carved elaborately into their headpieces. He spent ten minutes on each, permanently changing them into something a bit more utilitarian, but comfortable.

Well, now he had two finished rooms. Just a dozen more to go.

* * *

"Trash. Trash. Tra- wait, hold it up again. Um, put it in the 'maybe' pile. Trash. Trash. Maybe. Trash. Ooh! That's Postwaggle's _Principles of Unnatural Deduction_!"

"Treasure?" Harry asked.

"Definitely. Without that, we couldn't have sent you back more than two months in time without your body unravelling."

"Nice to know."

Harry put the tome on the stack of books that represented everything from the Black library actually worth keeping. The 'trash' pile was a dozen times larger. It was made up of books of dubiously appropriate magic, cursed books, and pureblood screeds, in approximately equal proportions.

He held up the next one, and Hermione's portrait peered from the Slytherin locket to scan the title. "Trash."

He picked up the next from the half-empty shelf. "Um..." Hermione hesitated, looking torn.

Harry squinted at the spine. "It's 'Magically Inflicted Diseases of the Bladder', Hermione. Dark magic _and_ pointless _and_ disgusting? Why would we want that?"

"It could have useful counter-curses in it," she said defensively.

"Fine. I'll put it in the 'maybe' pile, but only so I can get rid of it later when you're not looking."

The 'library' had been really quite small, and by the time they were done, it could be more accurately described as a 'bookshelf'.

"_Incendio_." Harry put plenty of juice into the spell, listening with amusement to the various squawks and snarls coming from Hermione's picture.

"You _said_ they were trash, 'Mione."

She sniffed at him, then stomped out of the frame to visit her other painting.

Harry finished up, _scourgifying_ the library floor and replacing the two gothic lecterns with nice reading desks. The room was still a bit gloomy, so he conjured hundreds of red glass jewels and floated them up to the ceiling, cementing them in place with a Permanent Sticking Charm. The light from the safety lamps glittered off them pleasantly.

"Right. Downstairs." He picked up the light blanket-lined clothing basket he was carrying Young Harry around in, and headed to the staircase.

* * *

The huge below-ground kitchen was filthy. After his cleaning charms, Harry burned out a mass of cobwebs overhead, zapped the dark fireplace into pale pink marble, and put a polishing charm on the long central table.

He stayed well away from Kreacher's cupboard, but glanced into the pantry. One look was enough for him to banish the entire current contents – honestly, who kept human fingernails in pickle jars? – before going upstairs to retrieve the purloined baby food. He'd gone out this morning to supplement the cans of mush with stolen bread, crackers and tins of beans.

"Going to have to do something about money, too," Harry said aloud. "In both worlds."

"We could have sold those books for a few Galleons in the hand," Hermione's portrait said reproachfully. "If you hadn't _burned_ them."

"Better to go hungry then let some dark wizard – or worse, _potential_ dark wizard – get their hands on them," Harry said shortly. "Anyway, there's plenty to sell here. The real problem is that I don't want to leave kiddy-me alone, but I don't want to take him out to Diagon Alley even under a glamour. The news about his disappearance must have broken by now. Anyway, add 'steal more food' to the list."

Hermione gave a long-suffering sigh, which Harry ignored. He certainly wasn't going to let the elf cook for them. Come to think of it, what had Kreacher himself eaten all these years?

His eye was horribly drawn to the enchanted stone box which kept cuts of meat chilled.

When he levered off the lid, he found that the coldbox was, mercifully, empty. There was something rattling about under the sink, though.

Harry paused, considering. It was probably a boggart, and he hadn't faced one of those in years, so he wasn't sure what form it would take. He glanced back at the clothes basket, from which a young voice chortled, happy about the existence of coloured balls. _It'll probably be Young Me, dead_, he thought. _And then... real me, fading away_.

He shook himself distractedly, knowing it didn't work like that. Coming back in time had completely annihilated the future. Losing Young Harry, institutionalising Dumbledore, blowing up the planet – nothing would have any impact on his current existence.

He opened the doors.

"What."

The thing that emerged was...

"Maths? I'm not afraid of _maths_. Who said I was afraid of maths? Maybe... maybe I don't have anything left to fear, and the boggart just reverted to some sort of weird default setting?"

Harry ran his fingers through his hair, staring at the glistening strings of complex equations that floated in the air towards him. Some were familiar rune-tuples, and he recognised a destabilising lemma from arithmancy.

"It's a magical hypothesis," Hermione said, peeping out of his shirt. "I think it's implying the immutability of timelines. The inference is that nothing you do will have any effect on events in the long term."

Harry thought deeply on this, as the glowing symbols drifted closer.

"Bullshit," he pronounced. "_Riddikulus_."

He laughed, watching the numbers and proofs shriek and burn, withering away before him. Five years of life following the practical extinction of Britain had ...changed his sense of humour somewhat.

Especially after he had gone back there.

* * *

Harry pocketed the boggart, now transfigured into a fly and trapped inside a piece of resin, and moved through a small door at the end of the kitchen. There, three stone steps led down a short way, into the wine cellar.

Harry lit his wand and looked around. The place was damp and fungal. Several oak firkins had been reduced to rotten splinters littering the floor. Rats skittered away from the light.

One shelf held tiny bottles of spirits, while on the opposite wall, there were shelves of... well, bottled _spirits_, amongst other things. Malevolent eyes stared out of the glassware, and smoky vapours coiled slowly in jars. There was also a row of larger, ornate crystal bottles, each with precious gems set in their lead stoppers. Most of these were filled with blood.

Old wine bottles lay on racks, obscured by dust. Harry's gaze passed over them, and then his eyes watered painfully when he glanced at one dark corner. He automatically took a step back, moving into a crouch that minimised his frontage to attack.

"_Homenum Revelio_!"

Nothing changed, but Harry found his eyes still refusing to focus on whatever was in the corner.

"_Specialis Revelio_! _Cistem Aperio_!"

The air in the gloomy room shimmered, and there was a tinny noise. Harry hesitantly identified it as a notice-me-not charm breaking, which Hermione confirmed aloud a moment later.

He moved cautiously over to the corner, and found an old, dusty wooden crate in a heap of empties.

* * *

Harry set the crate down on the newly-polished kitchen table with a thump, then as a precaution, moved Young Harry's makeshift playpen into the hallway.

"What is it? Some sort of secret treasure, do you think?" Hermione asked. "Or something Sirius' brother didn't want the Death Eaters to find out about? You don't think it has to do with..."

Harry sighed, tapping his wand against each side of the box. "No. I'm sure it would be under a better protection if it was." He frowned, not detecting any traps. He flicked his wand, opening the top.

A strange sight met his eyes. He approached the box, hesitantly.

"That's an... unusual figurine. What are all these big coloured feathers? And this leather thing?"

Harry was confused. He examined a handful of whips and chains. However thematic that sounded, they somehow didn't _look_ quite as _dark_ as the rest of the house. "These handcuffs are all fuzzy."

Hermione, on the other hand, had a bit more of a clue. After all, girls talk girls' talk. "Harry, do you really not know what all of this is?"

Harry glanced down at her picture. Her cheeks, formerly Flesh Tone #17, had become distinctly Pink Ochre, and the blush was rapidly reaching Scarlet Sienna Bloom.

"That figurine is a ...personal massager, Harry. And the mask is for- well. They're toys. _Adult_ toys."

"Oh? Oh... Oh! _Oh_." Now Harry was blushing, too. He dropped the handcuffs. "Oh _god_. Um. I have to admit I never really... after Ginny died, when they went to try to... and then we had to flee, and I didn't know anyone in France... and before I'd even regained consciousness, you'd worked out we could send one of us back to fix things, so we had too much to do, I couldn't justify..."

"Perfectly understandable," the portrait said, not looking him in the eye. "I mean, it's not like – what are you _doing_, Harry?"

"Checking," he said absently, ratting through the crate with his wand levelled over it. "Looks like there's no actual dark magic on any of them. A few... vibrating charms, enchantments for warmth and... stuff, but they wouldn't show up if you checked for curses."

He closed the box again and thought deeply. "Hermione, you know how you researched linking ingrained charms to passive triggers? Do you think we could do that on a _depulso_?"

* * *

The portrait of Albus Dumbledore waited in silence for five minutes after Harry left. He probably didn't have much more than another five; the young man was leery of leaving Young Harry alone with only the Headmaster's portrait watching over him.

Dumbledore nodded to himself. Hermione had not returned from the Slytherin locket portrait, even to 'check up' on them. He called loudly, "Kreacher!"

The house-elf appeared with a pop, and looked about the empty room in confusion.

"Ah, Kreacher," Dumbledore said, drawing his attention. "You've made a commendable effort cleaning the house. You know, I remember young Regulus Black fondly. A most capable student."

"Master Regulus was a great wizard," Kreacher hissed, scuttling around the anti-elf ward that lay over the crib, and towards the painting. "Master Regulus was fit to use the Black name. Blood traitors should bite their tongues instead of speaking of him!"

"Quite so," said Dumbledore pleasantly. "However, I have a secret task that I think Master Regulus would think quite important, given that his aim was to bring about the fall of the Dark Lord. Here is what must be done..."

* * *

Remus Lupin sat in an uncomfortable chair by the hospital bed, feeling angry and guilty in equal measures. In front of him, Sirius' face was hollow, his eyes underscored by dark crows' feet. Even under heavy sedation, the man's expression frequently flickered into horror, rage or disgust.

The Ministry had released Sirius to St Mungo's on the proviso that he stayed there, for now. They had no real grounds to hold him, since one murder victim had suddenly turned up and confessed killing the other twelve victims. In a lucid moment Sirius had offered to give his account under veritaserum, and Amelia Bones had let him, off the record, asking just enough that she was sure of his innocence.

Still, in a balls-up like this, the Ministry would like nothing better than to sweep it all under the rug. And the best way to achieve that was for the victim of the miscarriage of justice to undergo a nice, _long_ convalescence, until the furore in the press died down.

There were two Aurors on guard outside the door, and one of them checked inside every ten minutes. Everyone entering, even the healers, got vetted carefully. Lupin had waited for hours outside the room yesterday before Amelia appeared. Fortunately, she knew him, and had given him dispensation to visit when he wanted.

There were Dark Detectors on the door, and a wide-area anti-apparition jinx over the entire ward. The Ministry was now very keen to see justice done, which meant extra security measures. The consequences would be dire if anybody got to Sirius Black – to attack him, for instance, or worse, get an interview.

Given all the protections, Remus was quite startled when a shadow fell across him.

His head jerked up from contemplation. He didn't recognise the muscular blonde man in front of him. "Hey! How did you get in? There are guards right outside the door!"

"Window." The stranger jerked a thumb, his eyes glued to Sirius' face. "I had to find an owl anyway, so it was convenient. And Aurors tend not to think outside the box."

Lupin's attention was drawn to the bouquet of plastic backscratchers and half-bag of lemon candy in the man's hand.

The stranger looked up at him at last, then followed his gaze. "Oh, yes. I brought these."

* * *

Harry suppressed the urge to giggle as Remus frowned bemusedly at him.

"He's not allowed anything with sugar until he's off the potions," the werewolf eventually said.

"What are you, his mother, Moony?"

Remus was standing, wand in hand, in a flash. "How do you know that name?"

Harry blinked. "Oh right, sorry. It's me, Harry. Remember? I turned up on your doorstep a couple of days ago with my child self and some good news. I'm under polyjuice."

He turned away, found a vase on a side table, and arranged the brightly coloured backscratchers he'd grabbed from a muggle junk shop. Turning back, Harry sighed at Moony's pointing wand.

"Explain," the man said tightly. "You _had_ Harry. You claim you _are_ Harry. Now Dumbledore's told the Ministry that James' son has gone missing and he can't find him. You dumped some incriminating evidence on me and ushered me off to Azkaban, and the Ministry was in turmoil by the time I got back, since you'd dropped the little traitor off in their midst. You _look_ like a weedy version of James but you don't smell exactly like him, you obviously know Sirius, and you have a _lot_ of explaining to do."

Damn it. Harry brushed his fringe back, showing a pale jagged scar. "I really _am_ Harry. I really _did_ come back in time." He shrugged. "I'm not sure if I can convince you, but I can tell you a few things only you or Sirius should know..."

He took a deep breath. "Your boggart is the full moon. Your patronus is a gibbon. Sirius once tried to murder Snape by telling him about the passage from the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack one night when you were there. James saved him and Dumbledore covered it up. He made you a prefect to try to get the other three under control but it didn't work. They were animagi by fifth year, and kept you company on the full moon – Padfoot's a dog, Wormtail's a rat. Prongs was a stag, and had an invisibility cloak of such fine quality that only Dumbledore could ever see through it. All of sixth year, James and Sirius competed to be the first to steal Siobhan Davidson's panties. James had a purple birthmark shaped like a panda, on his right hip. He tried to burn it off with salamander venom, but only made it look like a scowling clown face. Uh, what else... The Order of the Phoenix, Fenrir Greyback, 'I solemnly swear I am up to no good', and Sirius' drunken confession about the hedgehog."

Lupin's face had become paler and paler, and his wand drooped lower and lower, and finally he sat heavily back on the chair. "_Nobody_ else knows about the hedgehog. As far as I know, he didn't even tell _James_."

"Anyway," Harry wound up, glad that Remus was accepting his tale, "How's Padfoot? Sleeping it off?"

"I don't think one typically 'sleeps off' a year in Azkaban. He looked so ill..." Moony's voice dropped to a murmur, and he looked lost.

"They're keeping him under until the first course of potions for his mind are done. They're saying he could damage himself otherwise. He'll be on a special treatment plan for months. Harry, Harry James Potter... it's really you? You travelled from the future, this isn't some joke?"

Harry flopped down on the St Mungo's bed opposite. "Yep. It's really good to see you too, Moony."

And with that, as he looked across at the two friends who had been like parents to him, who had _died_ for him; as he looked at the first friends he'd seen in the past, the emotion hit him.

His mental dykes had been holding back too large a flood of feelings, too long, and now his eyes flooded with tears. Harry knew, deep in his mind, that if he'd woken up after the war and that was _it_, two-thirds of the people he'd ever known were gone _forever_, every muggle, animal and bird in the UK dead or _worse_, then he'd have broken. He'd have snapped, and wouldn't have been willing to live any longer himself.

As it was, though, when he had come round, Hermione and the Headmaster's portrait were already certain their idea was viable. When he'd found _that_ out, at the same time as the devastating news, he'd pushed off a lot of thought, a lot of emotion. He'd thrown himself into the work with a focus he could barely believe, now.

Well, with a bit of luck, he could get things rolling here and then have the breakdown that was long overdue. It would probably last for years.

Harry struggled to get his breathing under control, and resolved to share everything that had happened with Sirius and Remus. The plan had been to work up to it, keeping back the sensitive information until they'd learned basic occlumency. Just in case there were any stray Death Eater legilimens wandering around, aside from the obvious one.

But now he needed to ground himself. He needed human contact. He needed, in short, to get _amazingly_ drunk with someone, in the way he and Ron sometimes did before ...the end; the way he and Hermione occasionally did after it. A house elf, two portraits and a two-year-old just wouldn't have been good choices.

He opened his mouth, bit down before the words "I won't let you die this time" could escape, and cleared his throat, aware that Moony was watching him in confusion. "Listen, I can't stay long, I've got Albus at home watching young Harry surrounded by a buffering ward, and I'm not happy leaving him for long. I'll meet you in the foyer here tomorrow morning-"

"Can't be the morning," Hermione's voice interrupted from his collar, startling Remus.

"Argh, yeah. Scratch that, it'll have to be late afternoon or evening, my schedule's just crazy. I'll tell you a story so ludicrously frightening your mind will refuse to believe it even after you've seen the Pensieve memories. Bring the newspaper if you can. I've got alcohol."

Harry spoke faster and faster, eyeing the door nervously. The proximity charm on his earlobe said that the patrolling guard had stopped, and now the other one was unlocking the door. He stood, patted his slumbering godfather gently on the cheek with a trembling hand, and gave Moony an apologetic look. "I'll be back. See you tomorrow evening!"

He sprinted for the open window and dived through it as the door opened.

"What- hey!" Footsteps clattered across the floor behind him, but he swung up onto his disillusioned broom and swept his invisibility cloak around himself.

An angry face peered out below, then turned back. "Damn it! Who was that?"

After a long pause, Lupin's bewildered voice carried to him. "I- I really, really don't know."

* * *

Harry apparated into the kitchen, thinking deeply. Quite apart from all the bad memories he'd just conjured up, it was a real shock to see Remus young and uncertain. Moony had always been the one in control of the situation. Now, the three of them were all basically the same age, and Harry had the advantage of magical foreknowledge.

In fact, Harry was probably technically slightly older than Lupin now – he'd used the time turner quite a lot in preparation for coming back to the distant past – but he had no intention of acting maturely. He swore to himself that he'd give Sirius a run for his money, even if time in Azkaban had reverted the man to a child's mental state. Let Lupin, younger than Sirius by half a year, be the responsible one again.

Harry spent a moment leaning on the coolbox, making sure he had a grip on himself. Then he sighed, and looked around the kitchen for foodstuffs. He had a few extremely onerous tasks and then could lead a relatively carefree life. All he needed was Sirius alive, awake and home. It would get him grounded in this reality.

He found the pumpkin he had stolen earlier, and grabbed the custard power, the noodles and the last quarter-tin of baby food.

Harry didn't know how to cook _per se_, and he didn't know what was meant to go into a two-year-old's diet. But he probably couldn't go far wrong as long as he ate everything that Young Harry did.

* * *

Harry fed his two-year-old doppelgänger and rocked him patiently to sleep, with Hermione and Albus harmonising in an improvised lullaby. Then he fell back on his bed with a muted groan.

The painted Dumbledore, who was now engaged in knitting a pair of pink socks that matched the carpet, looked up. "You've made excellent progress on the house, my boy. I was particularly enamoured with your choice of colour scheme."

"Well, yes," Harry said, eyelids already drifting down. "Do I not have mastery over the indomitable elder wand, unbeatable in a fair match, be it a contest of interior decoration or otherwise?"

The painted wizard could do nothing but incline his head in acknowledgement of that fact.

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ Thanks for the big response. Like it, leave a review! Hate it, leave a review! Want to express your ambivalence towards it, leave a review! Spelling mistakes or glaring plot holes, leave a review!

→ Note that I've rewritten most of this chapter. Don't worry, the much-anticipated backstory will turn up in a few chapters. But since my knowledge of young children could be written on half a postage stamp, then if you're hoping that the story will focus on Young Harry, you're out of luck.


	3. Unpacking

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter three: Unpacking**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

Since there were still hours left in the day, Harry took the time to sort out some of his important stuff. Most of it was equipment which Hermione, together with Dumbledore's portrait, had designed. Harry had helped a little, by lending all Snape's stored memories to them. He had also played test dummy more times than he was comfortable with.

Harry decided to use the dining room table as his base of operations, figuring that using the kitchen would be asking for trouble with Kreacher. While the elf had become almost _pleasant_ at the promised prospect of a new Lord Black, Harry wasn't sure if he would take a direct order, even if Harry had inherited ownership of him in the past... future... well.

To that end, he put up an anti-house elf ward, as well as protections to hide the room from visitors and repulse even the most determined toddler from the area around the table.

Then he brought down his mokeskin pouches from the spare room on the third floor which he had originally claimed, and which held Young Harry's cot.

There were a number of more regular pockets and parcels amongst the pouches. Unfortunately, shrinking something and then putting it in expanded space (like a mokeskin bag) was a recipe for space-rending explosions. He was immensely grateful they had ended up using a test dummy for that particular experiment.

So Harry had been limited to just the extradimensionality he had been able to carry on his person as he travelled back in time. Therefore he'd stuck to the essentials. If he'd had a greater luggage allowance, he would have certainly brought more food. His jaunt through the dimension of duration had been so physically draining that he'd gone through all his iron rations on just the first two days back.

Harry propped his two portrait companions up on the side table so they could watch, and began to unshrink and unpack.

"We'll have to get my notes on that sorted out," Hermione said, nodding at a brazier attached to a small metal barrel. Numerous tubes, bare wires and rods of alder protruded from it. The device hadn't been quite perfected before the rush to leave was upon them.

Harry nodded. "I'll work on it for the next few days. We might end up needing it, to snaffle Snuffles."

He carefully placed a spidery device on the table. The main part was a stripped-down Sneakoscope inside a Pensieve, surrounded by tiny mirrors.

Dumbledore beamed at his own pet project. "That should be a priority too, I trust. I seem to recall the chocolate frog company was quite successful in these early years, so the information I will be able to gather from my cards will be extensive."

Harry waggled his head non-committally, and carefully unshrunk a large hemisphere of crystal. Enclosed within was a slowly-bubbling cauldron, braced between three time turners and a complicated assemblage of spindly rods and springs. When he placed it on the table, the mechanism made minute adjustments to itself, before a counterweight dropped, spinning one of the hourglasses.

The scene inside the dome blurred, and the steam from the cauldron was suddenly in a different place. The potion was also a very slightly deeper shade. Harry examined it carefully. The sand in each of the time turners had reversed direction.

He stood on tiptoes to peer into the cauldron. "The thousand-year potion seems to be going well," he reported. "Snape-"

"Professor Snape, Harry." This was a habit he'd never been able to break Dumbledore of. The man's mind was essentially fixed by pigment at a point in time in which he had been Headmaster and Harry a student.

"Severus," Harry compromised firmly, "was a miracle worker to create the recipe purely conceptually, since he didn't have access to deep time."

"Perhaps you will introduce his current counterpart to the theory," Dumbledore twinkled. "I'm sure he'd be extremely interested."

"Perhaps pigs will circle the sun on Comet 160s," Harry said dryly. "I can't imagine what I'd have to do to him to make him willing to pay a visit to House Black."

As he spoke, Harry unpacked a gas cooker, with permanent bluebell flames flickering under the charmed translucent lid. Then he put a pocket-sized Pensieve onto a table, and after that, a series of larger ones. Even the broken Pensieves had been amongst the most expensive of their equipment, such was the rarity of the object. Fortunately he'd managed to acquire two working models in the Department of Mysteries when he returned for the Time Turners.

The largest stone basin had a rectangular scrying glass attached to it on a complex hinge. The glass showed a logo of a pumpkin with a bite out of it, bouncing slowly around. Hermione's picture looked at it, twiddling her wand and obviously frustrated at not being able to touch things in the real world. "We'll have to work from scratch to get the bookshelves-at-a-distance set up," she commented. "And hire a professional to carve all the runes for the array, and maybe someone to do all the Protean Charms, too."

Harry nodded absently, unwrapping the padding from a selection of mirrors. Some were for communication, others for detection or disguise. One was a particularly fine foe glass, showing only vague outlines he couldn't make out at the moment.

Next to these, he set up a number of silvery instruments. Dumbledore had showed him how to construct them, apart from the muggle baby monitor. Information was the backbone of any operation, and Harry's information network was going to be bloody near _immaculate._

The last of the shrunken packages contained his old Firebolt, and also what _had_ been a broom of French design. Now it was stripped down to charms on a bare handle. The light-and-crystal engine affixed to the back worked... technically. It was mainly a side project, but if they found out Voldemort had hidden his secret weapon on the moon, then at least they'd have a way of getting there.

The two brooms were wrapped in a rolled-up flying carpet, designed for three people, which Harry had made a trip to Turkey to pick up. It was second hand, and had a coffee stain in one corner that refused to come out, but had still cost a small fortune. Flying carpets were almost as rare as pensieves. The rug went under the table for now, with the brooms on top of it.

One extradimensional pouch contained the Sword of Gryffindor, recovered from that terrible last battle. Harry hefted the silvery blade, and wished for a moment that Hermione had fetched the Sorting Hat when she'd taken Dumbledore's portrait. He had grand visions of creating his own four Hogwarts houses, breaking down the charms on the Hat with a powerful Confundus, and secretly switching it for the one currently at Hogwarts.

Hermione rolled her eyes as he dreamed aloud.

"There'd be Narwhalhorn," Harry muttered, "for people with the traits of perseverance and pointy heads."

He glared at Dumbledore's portrait. "And Twitchibick, for basket cases. That's definitely where the old me would have gone, but this time around I hope he'd be in Wombatob, the House that exemplifies having a scrap of common sense and no saviour complex."

Albus caught Hermione's eye and shrugged helplessly.

"And finally Ravpuffendorin," Harry finished happily, putting the sword down with a _clang_. "An easy out for anyone who was dead set on getting into one of the old Houses. Hmmm... could fill up pretty quickly, though. I'll give it some bad House qualities, like poor personal hygiene and inability to carry a tune."

* * *

Harry spent some time conjuring a tool belt and a pair of bandoliers, making them snug-fitting and sturdy. The rest of the bulky mokeskin pouches held an eclectic assortment of objects, carefully packaged. He unwrapped them all and began to reassign them to his new belts.

Out of the packages came two fluorescent cigarette lighters, a velvet-lined case with a basilisk fang in it, another similar case with a unicorn horn, a harmonica, a spare wand, various small metallic gadgets, and a high-quality pocket knife. He put these in the tool belt.

One of the bandoliers was filled with dozens of potions in small plastic bottles, and a few strange darts. Each dart had a glass bubble embedded in it, where liquid could be held.

The other bandolier was filled with rune stones. Hermione automatically counted them off as he stowed them. "Gengr... Algiz... Kibbuz... Glicyrin... Fogaunligorn... Ehwaz... Wagnija... Kijynsink... Runum... Dagaz... Thorn... Berkanan... Zig... Kaunan... Dabarbaran... Fimbul... Korpus... Gefin... Ansuz... Raido... Hagalaz... Naudiz... Ingwaz... Pulr... Pykomon... Tbemlnod."

The pair of omnioculars with a bright blue magical eye set in a socket between the lenses went on the chain around his neck. The chain already housed a medallion of disguise and the Slytherin locket.

Hermione made a face. "If that creepy eye bangs against my canvas, I'm going to be sick," she warned him.

"Be my guest," Harry said. "But if I have company around, go to your wall portrait to do it." He fished out a clunky digital watch, the exact twin of one he already wore.

The green glow of the one on his wrist currently read, "Sirius: St Mungo's Hospital", with the time in smaller letters at the bottom of the face. The one he had just drawn out said "Harry: 23n5813". The crystal display was oscillating between random flashing numbers, and the message "TARGET CONFLICT", settling occasionally on the words "12 Grimmauld Place" before going haywire again.

He frowned at it. Dumbledore's portrait, after taking off his spectacles and polishing them to get a better look, spoke up. "That should be quite simple to sort out. We can distinguish between the two identical magical signatures by also keying in the relative strengths of your magic. Unless your younger self manages to catch up to your magical power, of course." The ancient wizard's face folded into a smile.

"Well, it'll have to be later, since he's – mercifully – asleep at the moment," Hermione reported, sliding back into her frame.

"I love magic," Harry sighed, sitting back and summoning a bottle of wine from the cellar.

* * *

The next day dawned bright - not that many of the sun's rays dared venture into Number 12, Grimmauld Place.

Harry rose early. With the ground and basement floors cleared, and his energy reserves replenished by a night's sleep that had been interrupted only four times by a squalling child, he felt ready to tackle the upper floors.

Kreacher's efforts had been concentrated there for the last two days, so hopefully it wouldn't take too long.

Harry's progression up the house could be charted as a trail of cheerful red and tacky glinting gold and bronze, overwriting the blacks and dark greens that had stood before. The graph would be interrupted, at random points, by splotches of brighter green and gleaming silver where Kreacher brought back some of the house's lustre before Harry got there. But when he did, each of those spots, too, were swept under the wave of blazing colour.

The walls of the first floor landing, and the stairs leading up to it, were covered in the mounted heads of house-elves, with a few grisly trophies from trolls and banshees scattered about. Harry banished the latter, and hung conjured cloths over the former until he could find a non-loopy house elf to ask about properly dealing with the remains.

Harry entered the drawing room with some trepidation, remembering how difficult it had been to clean the first time around. After clearing a space in the fireplace for destroying things, Harry tweaked the curtains from a distance until the doxies flew out, chattering angrily. Lacking doxycide, he stunned each of the furry fairies with his wand. He also banished the carpet and underlay, right down to bare wood, hoping that would eliminate any clutches of doxie eggs in the process.

He also conjured sap around a dozen of the unconscious creatures and hardened it into amber, in case their venom came in handy. The rest he incinerated.

Harry scoured the windows, letting some light finally enter the drawing room. Remembering just in time about the undead eels in the pitch-black waters of the fish tank, he vanished the whole aquarium, then violently wrenched the lid off the snapping silver snuffbox on a shelf of curios. The tin was full of valuable wartcap powder, which he carefully transferred to another container. The rest of the 'curios', including a twitchy shrunken head and a soul-eating monocle, got burned in the fireplace.

Finally Harry sprayed stunners at the Black family tree tapestry, resulting in a small hail of unconscious doxies. He tried to change "Toujours Pur" on the crest to something excitingly profane, but the ancient artefact resisted his magic.

The first floor also had two bedrooms and a bathroom, which were less troublesome.

The first bedroom had nothing worse than a small nest of vampire mice, and Kreacher had already scrubbed the floor and walls until they shone. Harry changed the wallpaper, transfigured a large, disgustingly morbid painting into a free-standing sculpture of a dryad, and went to the second bedroom, carrying the wriggling Young Harry with him. After briefly considering some sort of leash, he returned his younger self to the large clothes basket, along with a handful of conjured foam blocks.

The second bedroom had a writing desk he recognised, but he found _two_ Boggarts in it, not just one. Perhaps one had eaten the other in the future. Or perhaps, over the years, Kreacher divided them like plant rhizomes, and redistributed them throughout the house. Boggart breeding was one of those things he'd failed to ever read up on.

After transfiguring his two new spooks into trapped insects for storage, Harry carefully removed the curse from a valuable-looking urn, destroyed a malevolent dagger, and redecorated the room, changing the fresco of coiling snakes to one of dancing hippogriffs in top hats.

The first-floor bathroom had the skin of some huge reptile in the bath, and a small heap of talons in the soap dish. Harry vanished these, and burned the dripping yellow mold off the walls. All the porcelain was inlaid with stark ebony and black oak, and the silver pipes had staring eyeballs in them, but he left them alone. Plumbing was a mystery he might never fathom, and dared not meddle with it, for fear of the forces he could unwittingly unleash.

* * *

Harry had already noted a suspiciously healthy-looking pot plant on the second floor landing. Now he cautiously approached it, and Dumbledore's portrait identified it as an Indonesian Sledgehammer Creeper. Since the predatory bush's noxiousness far exceeded its value, Harry burned it to a crisp. Emptying the soil from the rather nice pot, he discovered a large number of bones, many of them suspiciously small and human-looking.

He entered the living room, feeling rather sick. He had already cleared a safe space there, but hadn't yet redecorated. Now he took the time to entirely replace the coffee table, which was still weakly struggling to dislodge the wood-splitter he had lodged in it. The new one was a fantastic conjured thing of copper and crystal, with carefully bevelled child-safe corners.

He vanished the axe. It might have come in handy, but was courting disaster with a toddling child – whom the world possibly still needed to vanquish a Dark Lord – in the house.

Harry fed Harry, wondering if that was indeed the case. He was hoping that his brother-self was going to be able to lead a normal life, but even if he was still mixed up with prophecy, Harry had at least stacked the deck with his return to the past.

He put the spoon aside, raised the wards on the playpen for the child in the living room, and continued his renovations.

The grandfather clock in the second floor bedroom clunked loudly when Harry entered and shot a heavy crossbow bolt at him. Fortunately it was off-centre, barely skimming his forearm, but he berated himself for not remembering. A little ripple of terror went down his back as he imagined entering this room holding his younger self.

"I hope this wasn't a mistake," he said aloud, after the echoes from the explosion had died away. He rubbed his wand on his trouser leg, then scourgified the shrapnel of the clock. "At least with the Dursleys, he'd never be shot at, or eaten by pot plants."

"Didn't you say your cousin broke your arm when you were three?" Hermione's picture asked pointedly. "Not to mention the malnutrition and lack of a stimulating environment."

"Stimulating." Harry laughed weakly. "No worries about that here, I suppose." He rapped his wand against a bell that was whispering evil-sounding names to the room at large, Vanishing it.

"Don't forget the spy," Hermione said.

Harry's head snapped around. He'd forgotten about the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black. Fortunately, it was vacant when the light from his wand picked it out on the wall. A conjured stream of solvent removed the oils forever, and then he burned the canvas to make sure. The frame was quite nice, so he put it aside.

Hermione's voice called out from his collarbone once more. "If you're finished being melodramatic about what a simple Vanishing could have done, there's some sort of instrument creeping up behind you, and back in the living room, other-you has stopped trying to climb the containment ward and now needs changing."

Harry turned, to see what looked like two pairs of feral calipers. They obviously belonged to the same family as the scuttling tweezers that had tried to drain his blood in the original timeline.

Curious as to their purpose, he conjured a large glass jar and levitated them both into it. They were almost cute, up close, scrabbling at the glass like puppies in a shop window.

Actually, now that he thought of it...

"_Accio_ weird spidery metal things! ...Shit!"

He didn't break off the summoning charm in time, and the first nasty device whizzing in the door gouged a shallow line in his cheek. He reflexively stamped on it when it fell, clockwork spinning out from under his boot, then only barely had time to stop the rest of the animated instruments and levitate them into the jar. There were dozens of the things.

He pointed his wand at his face, feeling faintly uneasy about doing so. "_Eposkil_," he tried, and then "_Episkat_," a more powerful healing charm in the same family of spells. Then Hermione suggested _Eskipeo_, a curse-oriented version, and that one sealed up the cut.

Harry sighed. "Oh well. First blood when we're halfway done, that's not too bad."

"Second blood."

Harry winced, glancing at the finger which his younger self had bitten. And now he had a nappy to change. Damn it; if they _had_ left it a few months before rescuing the boy, he might have finished potty training, even under the Dursleys' negligence.

Harry sighed, and headed off to the living room for one more cleaning job of many.

* * *

The last room on the second floor was a storage space. Kreacher was already in there, ratting through the boxes and muttering, when Harry approached.

The wizard stood in the doorway, absently changing the floor to cork tiles tinted random shades of yellow and purple, and wondering whether to risk the house elf's wrath by destroying everything sight unseen.

He stared moodily at the house elf's wrinkly back, then tried a few dark detection spells. Surprisingly, only a few boxes – and a roll of cloth – turned out to have curses on them. Harry burned what turned out to be a smothering blanket, filling the room with soot and elfish imprecations, then turned to the contents of the darker boxes.

One was filled with small octagonal tins, made of tarnished silver and inscribed with runes even Hermione didn't recognise. He brought them down to the large fireplace in the kitchen, stood back and burned them to slag, while Kreacher looked on from the stairs and whimpered.

Whimpering turned to weeping when Harry did the same to a box full of cursed candlesticks and a rusty sacrificial knife.

Harry eased a crick in his back, and looked about. The rest of the objects were either harmless or not _immediately_ dangerous, so he left them in the spare room for now. Hopefully he'd get the chance to sort through them before Kreacher tenderly redistributed them throughout the house.

Which reminded him. "Kreacher."

The elf appeared, grimacing at him.

"Where are all those bear traps you removed?"

Harry understood, from the muttering, that they had been placed in a box in the wine cellar where filthy half-bloods would not find them. He disappeared down there, and after some thought, magically chained them all closed, then strung them from a high shelf in the cellar.

You never knew when a few bear traps might be useful.

* * *

Afternoon had well and truly set in by the time Harry had clean himself and eaten. Rather than starting on the third floor, he spent some time tinkering in the kitchen.

He gritted his teeth, wrenching one enchantment off the brazier with a special tool. Between them, Hermione and Dumbledore kept up a steady stream of instructions and suggestions, but it was difficult. The portraits had to rely on his description of things they couldn't see, either due to the limits of two dimensions or inability to detect the threads of magic. And Hermione in particular, even after five years, still had a tendency to overestimate his understanding of terminology.

"Just jump-jinx the second cortex of the addressing unit until it engages, Harry. We can't recalibrate the Floo router to the nearest node if it can't sense the local sub-net at all."

"I'm jump-jinxing! I'm jump-jinxing, okay? What the hell is a cortex, and which of these stupid scraps of metal is the addressing unit? _What do you want from me?_"

Fortunately, what _looked_ like Harry throwing down the wrench in a minor tantrum was _actually_ a mysterious type of magic which meant it was time for him to go get Moony.

* * *

Fawkes appeared in a flash of flame, dropping a letter into the Headmaster's lap. Dumbledore turned his attention away from the school budgets, glad of the distraction.

His slightly weary glance quickly turned into a look of horror. He recognised the look of the string of numbers and letters on the front, but not the code phrase itself.

His first instinct was to flick his wand and seal his office completely. The Hogwarts magic flowed through him, smooth stone sealing over the doors and windows with a rumble. A pattern of lights in the air told him that all the security spells, anti-spy charms and anti-compulsion wards were functioning normally.

All this happened on automatic, and was essentially just background to his second instinct, which was to stare down at the letter and feel very, very old.

Albus Dumbledore had created his system of phoenix deadboxes a century ago, and since then had filed important information with them every few months. This was the first time they had been activated, though.

He had put the heavily warded boxes in obscure places. One was deep below the frosty earth in Iceland, another sealed in the foundations of a muggle office block in Korea, a third buried amongst untold billions of tiny skeletons inside Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Fawkes checked them regularly, when he wasn't on his burning days. If the phoenix ever returned a letter which the Headmaster didn't remember putting there, it meant that Dumbledore had been Obliviated, or nefariously enspelled to some similar effect, or possibly even that Fawkes himself had been compromised.

The firebird pealed a bell-like note signalling curiosity. Dumbledore focused, performing the obligatory check for dark magic, then opened the letter with the tip of his wand.

The missive within was written in strange, scribbly writing, as if the writer was not used to penmanship of any kind. It was certainly not his own.

_The first Order of the Phoenix was founded in 1713. Gellert always wanted to visit Pyramids of Egypt. You added the Waterloo Line to your knee because the original scar didn't have it. You are responsible for Ariana's death, regardless of who struck the blow. There were two anonymous blondes in Rome, June 1902._

_Now that I have your attention, you have **not** had your memory altered, nor your security compromised. This is a different Albus entirely._

_Sirius Black is innocent. Harry Potter is safe. These two facts are not unrelated. Accordingly, your remit is to conduct damage control for having lost the Boy Who Lived. Talk to the Minister before Malfoy does._

_The end of Tom Riddle is nearer to hand than you have suspected, bar one unfortunate bump in the road._

_Regarding your private project: not only is the contact possible, but there is a slim chance that the original mistake may be corrected._

_You may reach me in deadbox #2, but not with any speed, I fear. Heed also that to answer too many questions could have dreadful consequences. I will provide further information as necessary._

_- A P W B D._

Dumbledore stared off into the distance, dealing with a number of revelations, then picked up a quill and a sheet of parchment.

* * *

Remus looked up from the magazine as he was accosted by an earnest stranger for the third time in as many days.

"Come with me, if you want to learn."

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ Thanks for reading! If you have anything to say, leave a review!

→ While cleaning and home decoration _are_ extremely thrilling topics, I'm going to have to slow down next chapter and deal with the boring stuff, i.e. backstory and plot. I apologise, but maybe there'll be more wallpapering to slake your thirst later on.


	4. Unloading

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter four: Unloading**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

Harry sat in the corner of the Herbert Greengrass Unliftable Curses Ward, on the first floor of St Mungo's Hospital. He was fiddling with his digital watch under his invisibility cloak. When the green display flashed the words "Lupin: pacing", he sighed faintly and settled in for a wait.

From time to time, he checked in on Young Harry with a scrying mirror he'd keyed into the wards at 12 Grimmauld Place. The toddler was playing a game with two of Hermione's portrait frames, racing to catch her as she flitted between them. Albus was sulking in his own painting, a whiskery game of peek-a-boo having been spurned by Mini Harry.

Half an hour later, Harry's watch had flashed to "Lupin: Travelling", and his hands went to his modified omnioculars. He wasn't sure what to call them, yet. He'd considered 'Mad-Eye-Oculars', as a tribute to the man, but didn't want to do anything which could give the time-travelling game away. Harry planned to visit Moody in this timeline and try to find out where he had got the all-seeing magical artifact, so he could make more sets, but it wasn't a priority.

He peered through the floorboards to the foyer below, spotting an Auror under an invisibility cloak lurking in the leafy cover of a potted hydrangea. Seconds later, Lupin walked into the room, tailed by another invisible Auror.

Harry smiled, and stood up.

* * *

"_Come with me if you want to learn."_

Remus dropped the magazine on a seat. The face before him was unfamiliar, but his sensitive nose told him this was the time-travelling Harry Potter.

He ignored the outstretched hand but stood up, eyes flickering about. "If I do, they'll question me about it. The Aurors made the connection between you, Har- the _other_ Harry, and Sirius, after you broke in here."

The currently bald, chubby Harry nodded. "You'll have to wait to show your face until we can get Sirius out, and then we can wrap things up so that they'll have no reason to question us. It won't take long. Trust me, you'll want to hear this story."

A young lady with one scaly purple arm was waiting nearby for medical attention, and looked across curiously at them. Remus, however, was balking. "Harry, I've got to stay with him. I feel terrible about how I just condemned him as a traitor. The healers aren't even going to let him wake up for a few days, so you won't be able to get him out. I can't leave."

Harry sighed, acutely aware that at least one of the Aurors would be hanging on his every word. He pulled out his wand and was offering it to Remus before even the agile werewolf had time to react. "Hold this, and your wand, out in either hand."

"What?"

"Just do it, quick." Harry gripped his own hands together upside down, locking his fingers, and spoke quietly but quickly.

"I, Harry James Potter, swear on my magic that I am who I claim to be, that I have no intention of harming you, the other Harry, or Sirius, and that it is very probably imperative to our mutual future happiness that you trust me and come with me now. So mote it be."

Strands of light flickered down from the wands, which Remus held in a shocked grasp. The distinctive aura of a magically binding oath filled the room, turning more heads.

Harry took his wand back, and the first stunning spells started flying as he offered his hand again.

The ensuing shrieks from medistaff and patients woke Remus from his bemusement, and he gripped Harry's hand.

For his part, Harry ignored the red bolts of light bouncing away inches from his skin. He was wearing six different items of shield clothing, including a tie that deflected cutting spells and briefs which protected against legilimency. Hermione had reverse-engineered the relevant charms after the twins had died. Since then he'd constantly worn a complete shield suit, except when experimenting with particularly sensitive magic.

As the fourth stunner ricocheted away towards the waiting patients, and a thump behind him suggested one of the invisible Aurors had already accidentally been hit, Harry turned on his heel and side-along apparated Remus away.

They appeared in the white marble main hall of Gringotts, as the last few customers of the day were concluding their business – mostly shopkeepers depositing the day's take.

"Come on!"

Harry half-dragged Moony down the steps and out onto the street, before releasing him. "Now we apparate separately to the town square in Hogsmeade. We need to confuse our trail."

He appeared in the little magical village a moment later, and hurried over to Remus when he caught sight of him appearing a little distance away.

"All right. I'll side-along us again, and third time's the charm."

The world turned inside-out, and they appeared in the living room of Number 12, Grimmauld Place.

* * *

Remus still seemed a bit shell-shocked when he met young Harry properly, but had regained some of his composure by the time he was jiggling the boy on one knee. It probably helped that the child had clutched at him and called him 'Mooby' without prompting, and was now chattering about who knew what. Moony was also clutching a glass of firewhiskey in his other hand. Harry only had champagne flutes in the house, but it was a step up from drinking straight from the bottle.

"Charmed," Remus murmured when Harry introduced Hermione's portrait, and then yelped and dropped his drink when Harry brought Dumbledore's painting into the room.

"_Reparo_. _Scourgify_." The bits of glass flew together and Harry refilled it, smiling quietly as Dumbledore twinkled his way through an explanation to Lupin.

"It's still a shock," Remus said, shaking his head. "Even knowing you're from the future, I still thought for a moment he was dead. I mean, dead _now_. If that makes sense."

Harry grinned. "Have you eaten? I've still got some bread, bananas and lentil soup on the go. And there's an exercise in culinary experimentation solidifying in the coolbox, too, so if you're not averse to pickles and baby food, I'll get you a plateful."

Lupin politely declined, so Harry went to haul his largest Pensieve up the stairs. Then he put his younger self in the playpen with "Dubbeldore", leaving him to make towers from blocks or drool on the Headmaster as he saw fit. He warded the area carefully, stopping Kreacher entering or Young Harry escaping to explore the house. One of Hermione's portraits was propped on a shelf, so she could check in on him.

When Harry returned to the living room, Moony was staring at the Pensieve in its metal gantry. "Is that a TV screen?"

"Ah, I forgot you worked – currently work, I suppose – in the muggle world. No, it's not electronic, but you're close. In the future, muggles have flatscreen computer monitors, which is where Hermione got the idea. It lets us view memories in 3D without entering the Pensieve, and we can sort memories by length, emotion, name, donor, and so on."

Remus blinked.

"It can also be hooked up to another of our little projects, a machine which can send short messages across huge distances, read and write text, create memories from books, and share documents. I've got high hopes for virtual quidditch over a magical network, but that's quite a way off. We almost – _almost_ – had the prototype machine working in the future, but got bogged down in little details. Hermione wanted to call it the _igMac_, but I thought _Wiztel_ was more appropriate. Dumbledore was holding out for _Centaur_ after he found out that with enough power, it could predict the future. Anyway, for now we just need it to be a pensieve. I'll put the screen here so 'Mione can see. Got your drink? Right, here we go..."

* * *

"Okay, backstory time. This is the cupboard I grew up in. I kept dead spiders in that broken milk jug. This is Dudley's room. This is Dudley's other room. This is my aunt trying to beat me with a frying pan. ...Jeez, Moony, if you're going to gasp and curse at things like _that_, we're never going to get through this. This is me mentioning the only thing I had been told about my parents by the age of eleven..."

* * *

"They sent Hagrid for you? When Dumbledore knew full well you would be a special case?"

"I got McGonagall," Hermione said. "She told me how to get to Platform 9 ¾, all about the Hogwarts houses, and what extracurricular books I could get to ease my entry into the magical world. She spent time on the major means of magical transport, some of the more important wizarding laws, and the structure of the Ministry of Magic."

The painting frowned. "From what Harry tells me, Hagrid tried to turn his cousin into a pig, casually pocketed a stone which could have given Voldemort eternal life, and then spent the rest of the trip talking about how great Dumbledore was."

"It's quite a contrast," agreed Harry. "Also – hold on, I'll put it in slow motion – now, look closely here. You can see that pocket – yes, the same pocket where he put the weapon that can make the Dark Lord immortal – has a hole in it. See? A dormouse falls out as he goes into the shop."

"But _why_ would Dumbledore send Hagrid?" Remus frowned.

"Albus' portrait's story is that he wanted Harry to see a warmer side of the wizarding world than Professor McGonagall would give, and since Hagrid was already scheduled to pick up the Stone that day..."

"I think he knew more than he let on about the Dursleys, and didn't want to let McGonagall see exactly how bad I had it," Harry said cheerfully.

Lupin's frown deepened, and he knocked back the glass of firewhiskey, motioning for the bottle. "Go on."

* * *

"This is my first few days as a wizard." Harry flicked his wand to play a list of memory fragments.

"Blimey. Are you-?"

"Are you really Harry Potter?"

"Have you really got... you know..."

"Are you really?"

"So it's you, is it?"

"_Potter_, did she say?"

"_The_ Harry Potter?"

"We got Potter! We got Potter!"

"There, look."

"Did you see his face?"

"Did you see his scar?"

Remus coughed. "I think I get the idea."

"Bear in mind that before this, Dudley had made sure nobody acknowledged my existence. I guess I was quite lucky Dumbledore had decided to insulate me from magical society, to stop all that fame going to my head. Who knows how crappy a life I could have led if he hadn't done that!"

* * *

Lupin scowled. "Severus bloody Snape. The very first Potions class, you go straight to a practical, with no underlying theory taught _whatsoever_, and you're set to brewing a potion capable of _exploding_ and _melting a cauldron_ if somebody gets one of the instructions wrong? How could Dumbledore let that bastard in a classroom?"

"He was in love with Harry's mom, so after he leaked the prophecy and then ran to the Dumbledore, he made an Unbreakable Vow to protect Harry, for her sake," Hermione said helpfully.

"I have some memories to show you how well that turned out." Harry emptied the whiskey bottle, and tapped his wand against the pensieve before reaching for another.

* * *

Harry had found two specific memories: one of Hagrid booming, "Safest place in the world, Hogwarts," and another of Dumbledore benevolently saying, "I have your best interests at heart, Harry." He'd spliced them together and used them to punctuate each school year.

"Safest place in the world, Hogwarts. I have your best interests at heart, Harry."

_The troll, the Mirror of Erised, a dying unicorn, Fluffy, Quirrelmort revealing himself._

"Safest place in the world, Hogwarts. I have your best interests at heart, Harry."

_Crashing into the Whomping Willow, the cursed bludger, the duelling club, Hagrid being detained without arrest, Aragog, Lockhart attacking, the basilisk, Tom Riddle._

"Safest place in the world, Hogwarts. I have your best interests at heart, Harry."

_Dementors, the Fat Lady attacked, more Dementors, meeting Sirius, Wormtail, yet more Dementors._

"Safest place in the world, Hogwarts. I have your best interests at heart, Harry."

_Harry's name in the Goblet, Blast-ended Skrewts, the Hungarian Horntail, attacked by Grindylows, Little Hangleton Graveyard, Voldemort reborn, bundled off by Barty Crouch Jr._

"Safest place in the world, Hogwarts. I have your best interests at heart, Harry."

_Dolores Umbridge, Snape's Occlumency "lessons", I Must Not Tell Lies, Grawp, Dumbledore arrested, Umbridge readying the Cruciatus, Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries, Voldemort's appearance, Dumbledore finally mentioning the prophecy._

"Safest place in the world, Hogwarts. I have your best interests at heart, Harry."

_Memories of Tom Riddle, assassination attempts on Dumbledore, Ron poisoned, Dumbledore poisoning himself, hundreds of inferi, Dumbledore twinkling at Draco, Death Eaters at Hogwarts, Snape's killing curse._

"Safest place in the world, Hogwarts. I have your best interests at heart, Harry."

* * *

"You mistook a snake in a human skin for an old woman?"

* * *

"Anyway, I liberated Mad-Eye's eye from the bitch's door – no idea what I thought I was doing at the time – and went to get us out of there. We accidentally let the Death Eaters in here when we escaped, but we let a bunch of muggleborns go, and we did end up getting the locket."

Harry shook his head mournfully. "Months, _months_ on the run, and we never thought to try the killing curse on it. Ron was all, 'We should take turns wearing it,' and Hermione said, 'Are you sure that's a good idea, Ronald?' and I was like, 'Hurrr, of course it is Hermione, what could possibly go wrong'."

"We were young and stupid," Hermione said quietly.

Harry shook his head again and took a long swig straight from the bottle.

* * *

Remus rubbed his eyes tiredly. "If you knew the basilisk venom was killing the Horcruxes, why didn't you sneak into Hogwarts and get some? And then you could have made a magical vow with the goblin to exchange the sword with the cup."

"Er, that would be 'young and stupid' again."

"And so, when you decided to dive into a frozen pond..."

"Young," Harry snapped.

"And stupid," said Hermione's painting.

* * *

"_Anyone_ can imitate Parseltongue by _hissing_?"

"Sure, anyone," Harry slurred, nodding brightly. "You try."

After a moment of trying to make his tongue move properly, Moony ventured a hiss.

"Good first go. You said, 'I'm attracted to hairy women in clown outfits'."

* * *

By the time the Horcrux hunt was recounted, the two of them were surrounded by a ring of empty bottles, and Hermione had gone quiet.

Harry's story had, as they say, grown in the telling. "...of, of the Battle of Hogwarts, right? And so these pirates, thousands of them, are scaling the walls, and I got on my sphinx – I told you by this time I was riding a sphinx, yeah? It had these, these huge like laser claws-"

Remus firmly took the bottle from him, and followed it up with a sobering charm.

Harry instantly dropped his head to his hands, oscillating between equally strong urges to claw at his eyes and to squeeze his temples. The inevitable compromise, in which he clawed at his temples, didn't really work.

"Moony, you unbelievable arse, you could've warned me."

Remus shrugged and cast the spell on himself, wincing and rubbing distractedly at his side as all the toxins in his liver and bloodstream boiled off, escaping through his pores. "Tell the rest properly."

Harry told the rest properly, keeping his hands pressed to his face and showing three-dimensional memories when his voice gave out.

He recounted the final battle, the second killing curse, his duel with Voldemort, and how the Death Eater forces crumbled when Tom Riddle was destroyed. The crystal-sharp pictures of his lucid memories showed the bodies laid out in rows. Fred, George, Bill, Ginny, Arthur, Percy, Seamus, Lupin himself, Oliver, Luna, Kreacher, Colin, Blaise, Penelope, Professor Sprout, Professor Slughorn, Grawp, and a hundred or more Harry hadn't known at the time.

He'd tried to learn about each and every person known to have fallen at the Battle. Not that the exact casualties of that night were known.

Not after what had happened the next day.

* * *

Harry, even more grave than before, told Remus of the reports that had started to come in during the aftermath. Before they had even finished patching up the badly wounded or laying out the bodies, word of a growing cataclysm was spreading.

"Voldemort had a secret weapon," Harry sighed. "Like some sort of petulant child, he'd decided that if he couldn't have the world, nobody could. So he had some narcissistic little work of magic which would detect when his soul departed for good, and unlock a few chambers he had hidden around England. We don't know where, or how many, but from what we can piece together, they started spreading from at least three locations."

"What did?" Remus' face was grey and drawn.

"The inferi. The _contagious_ inferi."

* * *

"It was a doomsday weapon," Hermione explained. "He'd been working on it for years, maybe decades, and his death set it off. We're pretty sure he used an early form of the creatures in the cave where he kept his Horcrux locket. They were able to slowly turn any victim they killed into an inferius, but they had the normal undead weakness to fire."

"And they were contained," Harry said leadenly. "He must have been breeding better batches since then. The ones that appeared after the Battle of Hogwarts were fast, strong, and couldn't be burned. They were highly infectious, turning people into inferi almost _instantly_, instead of over the course of months. And they didn't have to kill – they could spread the curse with a bite, like a werewolf." He nodded at Moony.

"Each new inferius was capable of spreading the infection just as easily. And they didn't infect just people, either. They could turn animals into inferi – well, mammals, anyway. The taint didn't spread to birds or reptiles, or gods help us fish or insects. If it had, the world would have been gone like _that_." He snapped his fingers.

Remus shivered at the thought. It didn't take much imagination to picture an undead mosquito, capable of landing undetected on your skin and sucking the tiniest drop of your blood... and thereby turning you within minutes into a living abomination.

"The muggles declared some sort of quarantine due to biological weapons, and then unleashed a nuclear blitz on Britain," Harry said quietly. "The remaining inferi were cut off by the ocean and a hundred-mile no-go-zone, so the end of the world was contained."

"At first," Hermione added.

* * *

"So you didn't come back because of the war with V-Voldemort, as such," Remus managed, tears trickling unheeded down his cheeks.

Harry locked eyes with Hermione's portrait. "If we'd worked it out, we still probably would have," he said at last. "But I think Dumbledore's portrait wouldn't have helped us if it had been over with just, oh, two-thirds of the people I loved dead. He would have thought it was a justifiable cost."

"But this wiped out millions and millions of people, and was endangering the rest of the world," Hermione said. "And Albus' picture _still_ had to see that Harry was frankly _suicidal_ before he started hinting at the idea. If I hadn't been able to rescue my parents, or if Ron had died ...I wouldn't have bothered getting us both out of the country. It was far too close. I'd considered sending my mom and dad to Australia, instead of just a safehouse, but as it was, I was actually seeing inferius dogs on the streets by the time I apparated both of them away..."

Remus clasped his shaky hands to his knees. "This Ron Weasley seemed ...close to you. If he didn't die at the Battle, why didn't...?"

"He was institutionalised soon after," Harry said, nails digging into his palms. "He'd lost almost his entire family. We drifted out of contact with everyone we knew, as they disappeared into America or Europe. Ron was supposedly recovering, though, by the time we left."

Hermione, slumped down in a chair in her portrait frame, took up the narrative. "Time travel was something Dumbledore had been thinking about his entire life, since Grindelwald, but he hadn't had enough time to dedicate himself to it, and he wasn't sure it was even theoretically possible. Without three full-time jobs to distract him, his portrait and I worked out the details over the course of four years. We could send one person back, someone with a strong magical core. It made sense for it to be Harry. I couldn't have gone back as far. Twenty years was as far as we could be certain of, even with Harry's power."

Remus paused, a question on his lips. At last he said, "Could you... do it again? Travel back arbitrarily far in time?"

Hermione shook her head. "The formulas only allow somebody to travel back for as long as they had existed. So Harry could have gone back two more years, to his birth, if he had the power. Unfortunately, it's now not even possible for, say, _you_ to cast the spell and go back further into your own path. To before you were bitten, or whatever you wished."

Harry nodded. "Hermione could tell you about the prismatic nodes in surjective mage-space and the quasi-symmetric arithmantic principalities and so on, but it boils down to this: I went back to ash-and-glass England and stole a device from the Department of Mysteries which the spell needed. When I cast it, part of the whole process was the annihilation of the device. It wasn't just destroyed, it was destroyed _back in time_-"

"Removed from the timeline," Hermione corrected.

"Destroyed _back in time_, so after we used it to cast the spell, it had suddenly never existed to begin with. If we visited the Department now, it would never have been there. So the spell is strictly one-off."

"Assuming there's no other of these objects," Remus said.

"Given that we _think_ the device was the mechanism from Atlantis' central clock tower, it's a pretty easy assumption to make."

"Oh. Okay."

"Yeah. So, no saving my mom and dad, or adopting Tom and putting him on the right path, or going back and drowning Grindelwald at birth."

"So... you came back as far as you dared. After a lot of planning, presumably."

"Yes. But our agenda was pushed up pretty quickly when we heard rumours of a deathly infestation spreading across Spain. We put our house in France under Fidelius, and by the time we were even remotely ready to cast the spell, all of west Europe was overrun. We could have refined the spell a little more, raised a bit more money and brought back a few more neat things, planned for every contingency, but we really didn't have the time. I'm just glad it worked at all."

Remus nodded, still trying to take it all in. "Of course." After a while, he added, "And the portraits?"

"We could only send one person back with the spell. Dumbledore's is the one from his office. It's a regular magical portrait, not actually the person. We brought him back because even if he's annoying and blinkered, he's still useful and can help us deal with his flesh-and-blood counterpart. Hermione here is ...a bit different."

"Harry actually worked it out," Hermione explained.

"No need to sound so surprised."

"Hush. I don't know if you know much about soul magic, Remus, but if people knew about the sort of stuff that lies at the essence of magical portraiture, paintings would be banned on the spot. A portrait made of a person can only be animated after their death because it captures a portion of their soul. It's a shallow copy, not the person themselves, because only a part of them is embodied in it. And of course, they have no substance or magic. It's almost the same principle which creates ghosts. Anyway, we hired a wizarding painter to do my portrait, and had him paint over the same canvases using the same process every month for two years. It left a much ..._stronger_ impression of my soul."

"And she even looks a bit three dee, because of all the layers of paint," Harry said brightly.

"I said, hush. Anyway, we had him do several copies of various sizes, partially animating each one as he went, and it must have worked, because when Harry came back here I woke up like this."

"But she did feel a bit _flat_."

"Harry, if you want to tell this story, you're welcome to. No? Okay, then. Anyway, I found that I _feel_ exactly like I used to as a human, and I have all my memories and intelligence, and more importantly, I'm not trapped in a snapshot of my own past like Dumbledore's picture is. For all intents and purposes, I'm _me_. Harry put one painting in Slytherin's locket, so I could accompany him around, and I have other frames to look over Young Harry and check on the entry hall and so on."

Moony tapped thoughtfully at his teeth. "How did you pay for so many portraits? They don't come cheap. And, for that matter, a pensieve?"

"Four working pensieves, actually. And various other bits of equipment which are going to make your eyes pop out. To answer your question, though, Hermione and Dumbledore bouncing ideas off each other is good for more than mere time travel. She got, what, thirty? Forty?"

"Thirty-three."

"Thirty-three patents, mainly from the French Ministry of Magic, but a few granted by the ICW itself. So we were pretty well-off, for all that our original fortunes were buried underground in England, guarded by untold undead goblins."

Remus whistled. "I take it you're going to reintroduce some of these inventions in this timeline?"

"It's not a priority, since we have some other ways of getting funds, and we don't want to rock the boat _too_ much until we've done what we need to here."

"What _are_ you going to do with your future knowledge?"

Harry counted on his fingers. "Horcruxes, Death Eaters, a few well-placed rescues and a bit of a shake-up of the Ministry. Most importantly, though, find out if that doomsday weapon is already in place and destroy it if it is."

Remus didn't hesitate. "I'm in."

"I expected so." Harry yawned and stretched. "Any other questions?"

"How did you know to go to the Department of Mysteries? How did you get in there, through the abandoned Ministry and all the inferi?"

"I'll tell that one when Sirius is around, it's much more exciting and less tragic than anything I've said tonight. Anyway, my voice is about to give out. Get some sleep, we have a schedule to follow now."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You need to begin on the basics of Occlumency, for a start. And I'm going to draft you into helping Kreacher and I finish cleaning the house. Then we're going to visit the Dursleys."

Lupin's eyes glinted as he grinned at this.

"I hope you'll help with redecorating to your own tastes, since I'm pretty sure Sirius will agree that you need to move in here with us. In the future, you lost the home you're renting some time in the next few years."

Moony stiffened. "A werewolf in a house with a toddler? No, no way. Absolutely not."

"Relax. We'll sort out something for full moons, and then build a safe room to be sure."

As they stumbled out onto the landing, Remus started to speak again, but Harry cut him off. "Full moon was a week ago, right? We'll talk to Sirius about it before it comes up again. We're going to break into St Mungo's and visit him in the next few days."

"I'm fairly sure that's going to be impossible now."

"_Twice_."

"Ridiculous."

Harry grinned, and pushed Lupin in the direction of a recently-cleaned bedroom. He opened the door of Young Harry's room to check on his inner child, and asked, "Want to bet?"

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ Thanks for reading! If you've any suggestions or corrections, leave a review!

→ Note that in canon - or at least, film!canon - several members of Sirius' family are actually meant to be alive at this point in time. Although I'm trying to keep the points of departure down to a minimum, Sirius being the last living male of his line is fairly fanon (and is necessary for my story).

→ Some of the usefulness of a pensieve for narrative was inspired by A Black Comedy, by nonjon. That one's an absolute must-read.


	5. Still alive

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter five: Still alive**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

When Lupin stumbled into the kitchen, the two Harries were heating leftover lentils for breakfast, while Kreacher lurked in the background, fastidiously peeling an orange with a tiny fragment of razor.

Remus glanced curiously at the house elf, then coughed to announce his presence.

"Moony! Grab a bowl and sit down, you look like shit." Harry beamed and passed him the coffee jug.

"Shit," Young Harry parroted solemnly, holding a bowl of reheated goop in both hands.

"Umm... I think Albus must have been teaching him naughty words," Harry said quickly, helping his younger self scrambled up into his lap. "He's a terrible influence."

The toddler began digging in, using a spoon and his hand in equal measure.

The werewolf wrinkled his nose. "If you cooked for the Dursleys for ten years, why are we eating sludge?"

"They basically only ate bacon. Besides, everything in the kitchen is stuff I've been able to grab from muggle stores under my invisibility cloak. Once we've gone legal, and Sirius is back, I'll trust Kreacher to go out and shop for us. So how's things this morning?"

Remus sighed, and rubbed at his eyes. "This time-travelling stuff... I can register it on a conscious level, but it's hard to really get to grips with. I didn't exactly sleep well," he admitted.

Harry looked sheepish. "Oh... I've been addicted to dreamless sleep potion for four years now. I brew it myself, and don't even _try_ to sleep without it. I'm sorry, I should have thought to offer you..."

Moony shook his head and gave Harry a concerned look. "That kind of dependency isn't healthy. I take it you have ...persistent nightmares?"

"That's putting it mildly," Harry shuddered, then brought his coffee mug to his lips. "It's not so bad in the daylight though, with the knowledge that I can now prevent all that. The Occlumency helps, too. I just... so many died, Moony."

Remus nodded slowly, then put down his spoon and spoke, as if dragging each word out of himself. "I can't help but notice I didn't feature much in your memories after your third year. You only showed me... well, dead, after the battle. Presumably Voldemort reached out to the werewolves as well as the other dark creatures – so was I imprisoned? Did I leave the country, and return? Or did I change sides?"

"Don't be stupid." Harry avoided his eyes. "You had... a more than commonly tragic story."

Remus waited.

The long silence was broken by a voice croaking, "Kreacher has finished peeling the fruit. Will new master come today, to throw the half-breeds and bossy paintings from this most worthy of houses?"

"Thank you, Kreacher." Harry plucked the finely-peeled orange from his gnarled hand and put it on the table. "No, the new Lord Black is not yet well enough to return home. I promise that if things go well, it will be within the week, Kreacher. Thank you for being patient. Do you need me to give you another task?"

"No. Kreacher will go now, and make the upper rooms ready."

Lupin watched the elf shuffle off. "You know, Sirius used to swear that the Black house elf was a homicidal, fanatical menace. But here it is taking orders from a stranger and barely complaining about – well, my presence."

"Here _he_ is, Remus," Hermione corrected from the locket on Harry's neck. "Not 'it'. And I'm sure he's a product of his environment."

"Right." Moony didn't sound convinced, but turned his attention to Harry again. "You were about to tell me about my tragic future."

"Um, do I have to?"

"Story?" Young Harry asked plaintively. Harry glanced down at him, then back up at Lupin.

"Fine. You met a girl, the two of you had a baby, then you both ied-day at the attle-bay of ogwarts-Hay, and then afterwards..."

Harry looked down again. The toddler had started rattling his spoon against his bowl and muttering.

"You know what, I think I'll go ahead and put Harry in the living room to play first."

He headed for the stairs, leaving Remus shocked behind him.

* * *

"It was chaos, Moony," Harry said, nervously rubbing his hands on his trousers. "Once the inferi starting spreading, everyone was just trying to get their families out or find out what was really going on... and I was drifting in and out of consciousness all the time..."

He took a deep breath. "Your son was one of the ones who got left behind. Along with about a third of the witches and wizards in Britain, by the official count."

Remus was staring straight ahead in shock. "A son? I had a _son_? I- who with? Another werewolf? Why would I possibly- I couldn't inflict that on a child!"

"No, not with another werewolf. And see, this is why I didn't want to tell you. I knew you'd get your knickers in a knot about future-you passing on the curse."

Moony glared at him. "I think we're a little further into tetchy tantrum territory than knicker-knotting knoll. How _immoral_ would I have to be to-"

"Yeah, it got Ton- it got the lady a couple of years to convince you, too. Counting the time she wasted convincing you that you were an okay guy in the first place."

"Moony," Hermione broke in, "It's important that you understand: you _can't_ let the terrible thing that happened to you in the past dictate your future. There's the Wolfsbane Potion, and friends who can accept you, and hopefully we'll be able to improve the werewolf legislation this time around, too."

Remus paced around the kitchen table, digging his knuckles into his palms. Then he stopped abruptly. "Who was the mother, then? Anyone I know?"

"We probably shouldn't say," Harry demurred.

"I think I have a right to know..."

"No," said Hermione. "If we did, and you decided not to pursue her because of – well, or even if you _did_ decide to and were overconfident, or – anyway. We can revisit the topic in fifteen years or so if necessary. It worked out extremely well the first time, after all."

"Except the bit where all three of you died," said Harry helpfully.

Remus stared at him for a while, then sagged, his lips twitching upwards into a wry smile. "I think I've got this whole dynamic figured out. Hermione's basically the one with the intelligence to fix the future for all of us, Watercolour Dumbledore has the knowledge, and you can do heavy lifting. Hermione's essentially going to be the calm, competent, reasonable heroine in all this."

"So what am I?"

"...The comic relief?"

* * *

"So, why didn't we have Dumbledore's portrait with us last night?" Remus frowned at the dusty display case in front of him. "Even if he's not completely sapient, surely he must have wanted to help answer my questions."

They were standing on the third floor landing, which featured a large trophy cabinet. Harry delicately Vanished a pane of glass from it before answering. "The Mona Albus doesn't have a full soul. He's literally incapable of changing his dominant beliefs. I mean, his living counterpart is bad enough in that respect."

Remus coughed gently. Harry shrugged. "He's stuck how he was at the moment his painting was updated, a couple of months before he died: fundamentally good, but wrapped up in his Greater Good."

Moony began to pick through the various metal medallions on the lower shelf, with care. "You're not so keen on the Greater Good?"

"It was his and Grindelwald's slogan, you know, from when they worked together. I just think it's creepy he still uses it. Hey, are these calligraphy tips?"

Lupin glanced over. "And a box of blood quills, I would guess. Nobody keeps normal nibs in a velvet box."

"Useful." Harry pocketed them. "That'll even save us one trip to the Ministry. Anyway, Hermione and I had some pretty colossal disagreements with him when we were planning this little jaunt back in time. Dumblepainting wanted us to stay out of Britain and only make the most minor of changes – including leaving me, or rather, Harry, with the Dursleys."

"So you're keeping him out of the loop completely?"

"Nah, just enough to annoy him. He always wanted me to 'enjoy my childhood' the first time around, instead of telling me the important things I needed to know. Well, now it's payback time. I'm just letting him enjoy his senility."

"That's cruel."

"That's life."

Remus cast a detection spell at a gold-tipped fountain pen, causing it to glow dark blue for a moment. "What are we doing with cursed items?"

"Melt 'em into slag. That's pretty much the motto I've developed while cleaning this place out."

"Right." Remus levitated the pen, splashing conjured fire across it until it began to melt. He Vanished the remains with a flick of his wand. "...How bad did you have it with Lily's sister, exactly? You showed me some memories, but..."

Harry was quiet for a while, sifting through seals and stamps covered in ornate sigils. They looked like they had some official legal use, so he left them where they were.

"I had to cast some healing spells on him after I grabbed him," he said at last. "And he's not even had a full year at the Dursleys', this time round. A few scratches, mild muscular atrophy... a nasty bruise on the head, too. When I grabbed him – well. He's not as bubbly a child as you'd hope, but I think he's getting better already. If getting louder means getting better, that is."

Moony had begun to swear under his breath during all this, and Harry let him continue for a while before asking, "Is this silver?"

Remus lifted a hand carefully towards the goblet, which featured the Black Family Crest, and winced slightly. "No. Just pewter. Those two at the back are pure silver, though. I can feel them from here."

"Right. We'll keep them for resale, and melt the others into slag."

"I'm sorry," Moony began. "I shouldn't have listened to Dumbledore when he said-"

"No," Harry sighed. "Don't. It probably _was_ for the best, in the original timeline when nobody knew Sirius was innocent and there weren't any foreknowledgeable time travellers around to help out. Mind that brooch, I seem to recall it was dangerous."

Remus picked up the twitching copper butterfly gingerly with his gloved hand, and flared his nostrils. "Could be malaclaw venom. Is foreknowledgeable a word?"

Harry whistled appreciatively. "Malaclaw venom is worth twice its weight in gold, according to my Snaperies. Bottle it."

"And the insect?" Remus blinked. "_Snaperies_?"

"Just melt it into slag. Yeah, the good thing about Hermione being two-dee is she can't hit me when I make up words any more. Oh hey, Sirius' grandfather's Order of Merlin First Class."

"Where was it?"

"Just tucked into this dusty wooden case. I'll leave it for now, maybe frame it for him later."

"I'm not sure he'll care."

Harry shook his head. "We'll see. I know he was fond of that one uncle of his who lent him money and got kicked out of the family for it. Maybe his grandfather was a good guy too."

Remus hummed non-committally. "What's this?"

"Looks like some ancestor's duelling trophy. Pot metal, melt it into slag."

They worked in silence for a while, before Lupin blinked. "This bronze napkin ring is cursed... Um, for some reason. Seriously, why curse a _napkin ring_? I can't even tell what it's meant to do, maybe compel people to stick their thumbs in it and get bitten or something."

Lupin turned it around in his hand for a while, then shrugged. "Melt into slag?"

"You know it."

Harry reached to the back of the cabinet as fire spilled from Remus' wand, and he pulled out a music box he vaguely recognised.

"Hmmmm."

"It puts you to sleep, remember?" Hermione's face reminded him, suddenly appearing in the locket swinging at his collar. "Ginny saved us."

"Oh, right." Harry cocked his head to one side. "Should probably melt it into slag, I suppose..."

He checked the little jewelled box with the more in-depth dark magic detection spells he knew.

"Remus, can you see anything that's actually dangerous on this?"

Moony waved his wand a few times over the box. "One compulsion charm, almost completely faded with time, making people want to listen. Then there's ...a sedating hex coupled with a powerful calming charm? No, it's not really dangerous at all."

Harry wound the ornate box up a few turns, and listened to a few strange, tinkling notes, feeling his eyelids grow heavy with each one. He stifled a yawn, but no other magic came into play.

Well, in a house with a young child, that was just too great a treasure to pass up.

"Ah, music," Hermione's voice quipped. "A magic beyond anything which we learned at Hogwarts."

* * *

After pocketing the music box, Harry scorched a web full of demon spiders, and they moved on to the third floor master bedroom. One de-doxying later, it was almost inhabitable.

The key word being _almost_.

"Morbid bloody Slytherin families," Harry muttered, picking at the wallpaper. "I'll do the walls and ceiling, you do the carpet and curtains."

Remus raised his wand. "In what style?"

"Surprise me. Three, two, one."

A few minutes later, Harry looked critically at the stripy orange shag carpet and simple pink curtains Moony had transfigured. To his biased eye, they actually went well with the new wallpaper, which featured scores of huge animated Nundus chasing dozens of Hogwarts Expresses around in circles.

Harry shook Lupin's hand solemnly, then turned to Kreacher, who was lurking next to the wardrobe. "What shape do you think the lamp fittings should be, Kreacher?"

The old elf's eyes bulged. "Kreacher doesn't – Kreacher is _never_ asked – Kreacher thinks – snakes, maybe?"

"No snakes," Harry said firmly.

"...Owls," Kreacher muttered.

"Owls it is." Harry flicked his wand, feeling a brief pang of sorrow. The chance that any young person he remembered who had been born more than two years after him in the future would _still_ be born was very, very slim. The exact same sperm would need to fertilise the egg, and then there were all the environmental factors...

But he could still hold onto impossible hope that Hedwig would hatch in the new future they were building.

Harry turned his attention to the wardrobe, waiting until Remus was already pulling the door open before idly saying, "Don't open it-"

The look on Moony's face was priceless as several sets of purple robes flew out at him, wrapping around his neck and viciously trying to strangle him. Kreacher certainly thought so, and was chuckling scratchily.

"_Diffindo_. _Diff_- damn it Moony, hold still. _Petrificus Totalus_. _Diffindo_. Yeah, _there_ we go."

He un-froze the greying man, who collapsed swearing onto the carpet, and turned his wand on the dark applewood box, incinerating it without regard for any doorways to magical kingdoms the wardrobe might have housed.

Kreacher wrung his hands together, making small distressed noises as he watched the furniture burn, but not interfering.

Lupin gingerly touched his neck, where Harry's spell had nicked him slightly. "I wonder if the Aurors would pay some sort of bounty if I turned you in," he mused.

"If you want to see Harry's first accidental magic," Hermione interjected, "You'd better get into the living room quickly."

* * *

Lupin sat cross-legged and played pat-a-cake with Young Harry as the older version sifted through the mess on the dining room table.

Both of them were still beaming, after witnessing the toddler summon his blocks one by one from all the corners of the room - having thrown them out of his play area minutes earlier in a fit of pique.

Harry whistled as he tinkered with a wide metal dish and the keystone from the kitchen fireplace. The table was littered with glassy black stones carved with runes, as well as tangles of strange elongated crystals, copper tubing and bronze rods.

At last Lupin sighed, and got up. "If we want a proper lunch, I suppose I'd better go shopping. Why _haven't_ you been sending Kreacher, by the way? You never really explained."

Harry grimaced. "Mainly because I don't trust him not to spill the secret of our presence here to everyone he sees, let alone manage to buy things without getting arrested for gross indecency."

"But _really_ mainly because we're pretty much penniless. Hence the thieving."

"Hush, Hermione."

Lupin sighed. "You could have ventured out and pawned some of the safer things for money to buy food. It isn't as if Sirius would care."

Harry shrugged, knowing Remus would insist on taking the moral high ground, and changed the subject. "Moony, if you're going out, wear these." He tapped his wand against a dinner plate, frowning in concentration until the china reformed into a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

Lupin took them carefully. "What are they for?"

"Put them on."

He did.

"Now come over here." Harry leaned forward and squinted. "...Yep, seems to work. Ugh."

"Again... what?"

"I'm not much of a Legilimens, but Hermione and I both had to learn at least a little so that I could go beyond the basic exercises of Occlumency training. The glasses break eye contact, so I can't read you at all when you're wearing them. It's quite disconcerting, I just found myself trying to read my own mind for a moment."

Lupin blinked. "So if I run into, say, Dumbledore, these will stop him using it on me?"

"Well, no guarantees. Like I said, I'm not very good, and he definitely _is_. But it'll give you an edge until you've got at least enough Occlumency under your belt to detect when someone is intruding in your mind. Personally, I'm going to be wearing them too until I'm absolutely certain I'm safe."

Remus nodded thoughtfully. "That was a very fast transfiguration you did there, by the way."

"Dumblepainting gave me a few tips on his specialty subject. Mostly for using transfiguration in a fight to give me an extra edge - it's a pretty rare strategy, and unnerves the typical shoot-and-shield style duellist."

Harry scratched his nose, thinking. "Of course, using the elder wand makes transfiguration easier, too, amongst pretty much everything else. ...I wonder if I could get Dumbledore's one off him and spellotape them together?"

Remus nodded again. "Sirius is going to see a lot of your father in you." Then he gently disentangled Young Harry from his shoe laces and stepped out.

* * *

When Harry grew bored of ensorcelling the brazier, he warded the toddler in and went back to cleaning. The house's second bathroom was filthy, but not too infested by dark magic. Kreacher was there ahead of him, stripping mould from the walls at an agonisingly slow pace.

Harry had to disenchant the mirror, which showed everything hideously aged, and destroyed a particularly cut-throat razor which dragged itself towards him across the tiles. Something was scurrying around in the drains, but a few flesh-melting and bone-burning curses down the bath plughole fixed that. Then he ran the taps for a while, to be sure.

"That's disgusting," Remus' voice said, making Harry jump and clutch for his wand. The man leaned forward and gestured at the stream of dirty water.

"Yeah. In the other bathroom, I just left them on for hours to make sure the pipes were flushed clean."

"Pipes for the magnificent house of Black all fed by glacier streams," Kreacher volunteered with a scowl. "Water is fresh as driven snow."

* * *

Remus and Harry stood on the small fourth-floor landing at the top of a narrow flight of stairs. There was a bedroom door on either side. One door was painted dull red and featured a nameplate reading _Sirius_. The other was an acid green colour, hung with a self-important sign: '_Do Not Enter Without the Express Permission of Regulus Arcturus Black_'. Kreacher had disappeared into that room, mumbling urgently.

Harry turned to the other door, grasped the handle, opened it...

And gasped in shock.

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ Since this keeps coming up, I'll just repeat that I'm not writing slash. This means the story will not contain sex scenes, at all, and, I'm not going to write crack relationships, especially gay pairings between canon-straight characters.

→ I'm also not making Dumbledore into a fanon supermanipulative-arrogant-evil version. He'll be just as he's always been: soft-hearted, clever, opinionated, overly merciful, and convinced that two centuries of life have left him well-qualified to judge 'the greater good'.

→ Reviews make me happy. Please drop me a couple of words!


	6. Documentation

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter six: Documentation**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

_Harry turned to the other door, grasped the handle, opened it..._

_And gasped in shock._

"My god! Sirius is a secret _Cannons_ fan? Seriously?"

Lupin gave him a strange look.

"Well, sure. James liked the Holyhead Harpies, Sirius liked the Chudley Cannons, _Wormtail_ liked the Cornwall Corkscrews."

Remus sighed, and continued. "And I pretended to like the Devonshire Djinn so James wouldn't kill me for being uninterested in Quidditch. Didn't Sirius ever tell you his team? In the future, I mean?"

Harry shook his head, staring at the ghastly orange posters plastered all over the room, in between pages cut out of motorcycle magazines. A few brawny players paused on their broomsticks to wave at him.

After a moment, he found his voice. "He never mentioned that he supported a team at all."

Hermione spoke up. "Ron was a _huge_ supporter of the Chudley Cannons, he was an incredible boor about it. If I was Sirius, I'd make sure to never mention it in case it got me trapped in long conversations with him."

"Or maybe he was just ashamed that his favourite team hadn't won a game in living memory," Harry said.

"Maybe." Remus shrugged and raised his wand. A moment later the dust had spiralled away from the furniture.

Harry looked around Sirius' old room with interest. He hadn't seen it, back in the future, when Sirius had taken the master bedroom. This room had once been plushly decorated in Gryffindor colours, but it was now even more decayed than the rest of the house, since Sirius had been kicked out years before Grimmauld Place really began to deteriorate.

Harry stared down at a sepia-toned photograph of all four Marauders together, and wondered whether it was just Kreacher's madness that had warped the Black house. Perhaps the strange and varied defences Sirius' father put on the house had come into effect in the absence of a Black scion. Or perhaps there was some leakage from the dark tomes in the library.

Harry turned his attention away from the photograph, and flicked his wand in an intricate pattern. Moony was fondly regarding the remains of a muggle bicycle, and chuckled to himself before _scourgifying_ it.

Harry transfigured the huge black stone fireplace into something in lilac with much softer lines, and then, feeling whimsical, added a pattern of dinosaurs and spaceships to the the faded scarlet wallpaper.

The four-poster bed was large, yet managed to look small in the middle of the huge bedroom. Remus conjured new linen for it and startled out a family of flesh-eating earwigs. The drapes were free of doxies but did have several bat skeletons roosting in them, which rattled about the place until Harry stunned and Vanished them.

He helped Moony change the chandelier into burnished bronze, and removed the empty, mangled birdcage from a corner of the room. The writing desk was full of mildew, so Remus conjured it anew.

Finally, Harry scattered a few cheering charms on the furniture around the room. He had done it to the master bedroom as well, and felt a little morally dubious about it, but hopefully it would help to stop Padfoot disappearing from the house he hated. The charms would wear off in a few weeks, and then if Sirius still hated the place despite the extensive redecoration, he could sell it.

It would be a pity, though; Sirius' father had placed about a hundred wards, guardian charms and other security measures on the place, and Harry wanted to keep his younger self as secure as possible after taking him from the Dursleys.

* * *

Regulus' bedroom was small, neat and gloomy. Harry immediately took it upon himself to "fix" the Slytherin colours, while Remus painted one wall a warm orange to get rid of the Black family crest over the bed.

Harry chuckled and shook his head in disbelief at the ancient newspaper clippings about Voldemort stuck to the walls. It was obsessive bordering on creepy. He banished them into nothingness, but left an old photograph of the Slytherin Quidditch Team, and squinted at it. "Is that Regulus?"

Lupin looked over his shoulder. "The one with the Black cheekbones and the stupid braids? I think so."

"Huh. I didn't know he played Seeker. I'll leave this here in case Sirius wants it."

"I'm not sure he'll care."

"Well, he might once he learns that his brother actually turned against Voldemort in the end."

Harry picked up _Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy_ from a side table and idly thumbed through it. "I never really understood this stuff. The way I hear it, each wizarding bloodline has married every other one so many times that it's meaningless to say one family is _older_ than another."

Lupin shrugged, twitching his nose at several family photos in silver frames. He swept them into a sack with a sweep of his wand. "I think it's more of a case that you get penalised for each muggle or halfblood in your ancestry."

"Huh. Are you a pureblood, Moony?" Harry opened a small metal box, and blinked at the large, golden ring inside. It was decorated with the Black family crest in black agate.

"No, my parents were both muggleborn."

Harry nodded absently. The ring was free of curses, so he pocketed it to give to Sirius. "Okay, stand back."

Remus stepped back onto the landing, and Harry flicked the elder wand in a wide circle. All the coiling-viper candlesticks turned into prancing unicorns, and the floor shuddered slightly as a sparkling gold carpet grew out of the cracks between the dark wooden boards.

Harry smiled, left the room, and turned to the next one.

Then he stopped, and blinked. "Wait – we're _done_? I can't believe it. Ha! That's the whole house! We're done!"

"Actually, you still have to feed yourself and your other self, update the anti-trespasser wards so you'll all still be recognised when Sirius supplants you as Black Heir, go through the pile of 'maybe' books from the library, and prepare for tomorrow," Hermione's facsimile informed him from her locket.

"What's tomorrow?" Remus asked, conjuring a final coat of varnish on the stair rail.

Harry grinned wickedly. "The last time I'll ever have to see the Dursleys."

* * *

Eight-thirty on Thursday morning saw Harry appear with a _crack_ on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place, whistling.

"Harry!" Young Harry squealed from his high chair at the kitchen table when he wandered in. "Eggs! Brekkast time!"

"It sure is, sprout." Harry ruffled his younger self's hair. "I guess I'm going to have to change my name, too, before you get used to using it. No sense in giving the Unspeakables any more clues about time travel than necessary by having two Harry Potters around."

"Where did you go so early in the morning?" Remus asked from the end of the room, prodding distractedly at a pan full of scrambled eggs.

"The wizard registry office in the Ministry. You've got the stove on too hot, Moony."

"Why?"

"Well, at that heat the eggs will just stick and burn, which is exactly wha-"

"Why the registry office?"

"I needed to get some papers."

Remus turned around to look at him. "Oh, right." He blinked. "And where did the fancy suit come from?"

"I robbed a posh muggle store."

"I thought you were meant to be the transfiguration expert, now."

"_I_ thought I might want a neat suit in the future."

"That's hardly an ethi-"

"Your eggs are on fire."

* * *

Harry was still whistling as he strolled down Privet Drive. He paused to stash a dark artefact in the dense hedge before he walked through the gate at number four. It wouldn't do for the wards to alert Dumbledore that someone was bringing a thing like _that_ onto the property.

He rang the bell at the Dursleys', then applied a minor glamour to his face, finishing just as Petunia answered the door. Harry resisted a shudder. The woman was every bit as ghastly and abrasive as he remembered. It was strange to think the Dursleys were concerned about seeming normal, given that they were practically sociopathic.

"Whatever you're selling, we're not interested," the long-faced woman snapped.

Harry gathered himself together. "I was going to ask about young Harry Potter, actually."

Petunia paled. "He's not here at the moment."

Harry wedged his boot in the door as she began to slam it closed. "I know." He glowered at his aunt for a few seconds. "I've _found_ him."

The woman opened her mouth for a moment, closed it again, and shot a glance up and down the street. "You're not ...one of _those_ lot, are you?"

"Only by a technicality, I assure you," Harry said gravely, forcing down a smirk.

Petunia sagged. "I was going to go to the police soon, whether that stupid bearded madman was handling it or not. Where is he, then?"

Harry dug his nails into his palms, and said calmly, "Well, that stupid bearded madman would have wanted to bring him back to you. But circumstances being what they are, sign these papers and I'll take the child off your hands for good."

Harry indicated the folder under his arm, watching an eager glint appear in his aunt's eyes.

She hesitated only briefly. "You look a bit like ..._her _husband. A relative, I assume? Why didn't you come forward when they got themselves killed?"

"Quite closely related, yes. But I only recently arrived in the country."

Petunia pursed her lips. "We won't have to look after the boy any more? You'll take care of him?"

"I'll take care of him."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. Do you want to discuss it with your husband first?"

"No. We'll both be glad to be free of him."

"I see. Well, you'll have to step outside for a moment. The papers need to be signed with a very _special_ pen, and the stupid bearded madman put some-" he waggled his fingers - "on the house that won't let me bring it in. Just one little signature."

Petunia practically began to foam at the mouth when she heard that her perfectly normal house had some sort of magic on it. She marched briskly from the doorstep, muttering about "crimes against nature". Harry walked to the pavement behind her, and fished the long, dark red quill out of the hedge.

"Just here," he said, flicking to the back of the folder and pointing at a dotted line. "Your full name, please."

Petunia took the quill with a look of utter disgust, and her eyes flickered up and down the street once more. But then she looked at the line on the parchment, and signed eagerly.

Harry nodded coolly to her and stuffed the documents back into the folder. As he did so, he heard the first of her pained squawks as the blood quill begins to etch her name into her wrist with a flourish.

Then, grinning darkly, he pivoted on his heel and disapparated.

* * *

Harry started whistling again when he reappeared at the Black house. Hermione, on the other hand, instantly began speaking angrily from beneath his shirt. "I can't _believe_ she didn't even go to the muggle police when Harry disappeared! And she just left her nephew living with a complete stranger!"

"Don't I look trustworthy, Hermione?"

"Ha, ha, _ha_. Even if you do look like your dad, she shouldn't have instantly signed young-you over on that basis! What if you were some sort of sick freak?"

"Well, she probably thinks freaks _should_ bring up freaks," Harry said reasonably, jogging up the stairs to the living room.

"Huh! 'We'll both be glad to be free of him'? You should have hexed the hell out of her."

"Temper, temper. I had actually planned to, but I'm feeling in such good spirits this morning. And the blood quill is some payback for however much she's neglected itty-bitty-me in this timeline. Remember, it's been less than a year since he was dumped on their doorstep."

"Good morning, Harry."

"Morning, Albus." Harry saluted the portrait, then took him down from the wall to reveal the small safe he had transfigured out of a biscuit tin.

"Um, let's see..." he rested his wand on the manila folder.

"_Geminio Potentus_," Dumbledore reminded him. "Enunciate it clearly. Two flicks, a tap, and that delightful little twiddle for transfiguring things with words on them."

"Cheers. _Geminio Potentus_." Harry's wand danced, and suddenly he was holding two beige folders.

"Well done, my boy."

Harry put the originals in the wall safe behind Dumbledore, and spelled it shut. He glanced at the painting. "Changed your mind about me rescuing Harry, then?"

"No. But if it 'twere done, then let it be done, for 'twere well it were done properly."

"What?"

"Macbeth," Hermione said, moving into the other painting on the wall. "Horribly, horribly misquoth'd."

"Again: what?"

"Shakespeare," the two portraits chorused. "Did you _really_ not know that?" Hermione added.

Harry sighed, and shook his head. "Exactly at what point in my life could I have picked up any Shakespeare?"

"You're missing out, my boy," Dumbledore began, eyes twinkling. "Wizarding literature cannot hold a candle to the Bard. Or, for that matter, Austen, Doyle, Tolkien, Wells..."

"That's a startlingly Anglocentric selection of authors," Hermione observed, frowning.

"Alas, my-"

"_Silencio_." Harry put his hands on his hips and glowered. "If you want me to make those copies of your canvas, save it for when I'm not in the room, please."

Dumbledore glared back at him.

Harry smiled sweetly, cancelled the spell, and took down the Headmaster's portrait. "_Geminio Potentus_... _Geminio Potentus_... _Geminio Potentus_. How many do you want?"

"One for each room and a few spares," Albus said sullenly.

"Fine, but not the bedrooms. That would just be creepy."

* * *

By the time Harry had finished casting all the duplicating charms and then the spells that would link the portraits to the original, Remus had wandered in with Young Harry on his hip and was watching in fascination.

"_Inanimatus Conjurus_," Harry said, rapping the elder wand against the last frame, and sat back, wiping his sweaty brow.

"Ah, excellent," the two-dimensional Dumbledore said, his eyes sparkling again. He moved cautiously from his painting on the wall into the one in front of Harry, then turned, hitched up his robes and sprinted in an undignified fashion through each of the frames in turn.

"Well, these seem to work."

"You're welcome," Harry said, tucking his wand behind his ear and turning to smile at the two people watching.

"Will that work on Hermione?" Remus asked.

"Unfortunately not. The extra spellwork we commissioned so that we'd capture pretty much _all_ of her in portrait form can't be copied. Unless we had the original Hermione here to be painted as we copied over the spells. We had several done paintings, though, which I brought with me, so I can put her up in a few rooms."

"It's not the spellwork as such that's the problem, Harry," Hermione said. The portrait on the wall showed her in their future library, and she began to run her fingers over the painted shelves, looking for a book. "Gaius in his _Forms_ says that theoret-"

"Nooooo! No academic discussion in my presence, except engineering instructions, grudgingly followed!"

Hermione huffed, and Remus raised an eyebrow. "_I'm_ interested in hearing about it," he said.

Harry spent the afternoon playing with Young Harry.

* * *

"I'm not sure about this," Remus said.

"Come on, Moony. For Young Harry's sake. Otherwise he'll be found and returned to a lifetime of misery and neglect under the Dursleys. You don't want that, do you?"

"I-"

"Come _on_. Do it for James, too. He's probably looking down at you right now, saying, _I know my friend Moony will do what's right for my son_."

"The bit I wasn't sure about was helping you attack Ministry officials."

"Oh. Well, you don't need to _attack_ them, just _divert_ them."

"Fine. Also, thanks for that little bit of emotional blackmail. That was, you know, _completely fair_."

"I'll make it up to you."

"How?"

"I'll buy you an ice cream. Two, if you stop whining."

Remus sighed, and drank the polyjuice potion.

He made an anguished face, which remained for a few seconds after the transformation was complete. "Blerrrgh. Can't you use all those potion master memories to improve the flavour?"

"I tried! I picked a really cheerful muggle. Because she seemed so nice, I hoped polyjuice from her hair might taste better than normal."

"I-" Lupin looked down at his bust, and sighed. "You had to make me a woman, didn't you?"

"Whine about it later, Moony, when you have ice cream to cheer you up. We've got to go."

"Why?"

"I don't trust that ward to keep Foot-high Harry contained for more than an hour. I suspect I'm a genius at that age," Harry added proudly.

Remus muttered something, and drew his wand. "Fine. Drink your polyjuice and let's go."

"Oh, _I'm_ just using a simple glamour. I don't intend to be seen."

Moony glared at him.

* * *

Harry lay invisibly under a bed in the Herbert Greengrass Unliftable Curses Ward, tracing a wide circle on the floor and resisting the urge to whistle.

It had been clever of them to magically seal all the building's windows, but that had been no obstacle, even with people on the lookout for invisibility cloaks and disguises. Harry had simply had Moony transfigure him into a hairclip and wander St Mungo's until he found an empty corridor where he could lift the charm.

Harry fancied he could hear muffled sounds in the distance signifying Remus was doing – well, whatever he had decided to do. He gripped the wand and put a little more power into the cutting spell.

The small section of floor twisted and sagged, and Harry quickly levitated it up before it could fall. He glanced down through his modified omnioculars to check the positions of the Aurors in the ward below. One disillusioned, one under an invisibility cloak, both watching the door carefully.

A silent stunner took care of the first, but the cloaked one had time to react, and artfully dodged Harry's next spell, firing back with bludgeoning hexes. Harry deflected these and cast two disarming spells in rapid succession, following up with a tripping jinx which finally hit the Auror. He stunned him, then dropped down onto a hospital bed.

"_Colloportus_. _Effertus_. Hello, Sirius." The door sealed shut and a heavy bar appeared across it.

Harry dispelled his disguise charm and looked down at his sleeping godfather. "Oh, right. Damn, Moony said they'd only be keeping him under for a few days. _Ennervate_."

"Huh – whuh? I'm up! I'm up! I..."

"Morning, Sirius. Just need you to sign this."

"I... who- J- James? My god... Crap, did I _die_?"

Harry laughed as his godfather blinked up in him in confusion.

"Sorry, Padfoot. I'm not James, but I _am_ a Potter. I'll explain how it works later, I don't have long."

"Uh... James... I..." Sirius struggled to a sitting position and rubbed his eyes. "Why aren't I in Azkaban? I thought I dreamed..."

Harry rummaged for his folder. "The Ministry knows that Wormtail framed you, but Harry has been staying with Lily's ghastly muggle family, the Dursleys. If you're going to adopt him, you're going to need to sign these forms. Can you hold a pen?"

Sirius blinked at him.

"Here, take mine. Don't worry, we'll go over it later with you signing in blood. But not until you're certifiably non-certifiable, so it'll be magically binding. Just covering my bases for now."

"Little Harry... with Lily's sister? Who decided that? Why?" Sirius asked hoarsely. He looked healthier than Harry remembered from the first times, but his eyes were sunken and his skin waxy.

"Dumbledore. There are blood wards protecting their home, and he didn't want Harry to 'get a big head'. And I have it on good authority that he'll try to find a way to get Harry back there, so if you want to be able to look after him..."

Harry waggled the pen, and Sirius took it, after coughing throatily.

"There's only a few places you need to sign, it could be worse when you think about how bureaucratic the Ministry is," Harry said, flicking through the documents. He realised that he was nervously chattering. Well, this _was_ his godfather's first impression of him in this timeline.

"Initial all the dotted lines, then sign in full on the last page. Um. Sorry, Moony wanted to be here now that you're awake, but I needed him to be a distraction, so he's running around in a dress. I gave him some firecrackers but he said he had some ideas of his own."

Sirius stopped his curious examination of the ballpoint and peered at Harry. "Are you _sure_ you're not James?"

"Pretty sure."

"And... Moony doesn't-" Sirius stopped and rubbed his eyes again. "Moony doesn't hate me?" The pen scratched across the page.

"I _told_ you, we know you were framed. Merlin's third nipple, Padfoot, are you paying attention at all? Anyone would think you'd been in a magical coma for the last week."

Sirius smiled weakly. "Why did you need a distraction, Prongs? Did – are those guys _dead_?"

"I'm not Prongs, Sirius," said Harry gently, following his gaze to the stunned Aurors. "And no, I had to knock them out to get to you. I've taken Young Harry from the Dursleys, and they probably think me or Lupin have something to do with it... and they'll want to talk to the person who wrapped Wormtail up neatly for them, too. Oh, and I've assaulted various Aurors, too," he added as an afterthought.

Harry noted Sirius' look of confusion. "Don't worry about it, it'll all become clear. Long story short, me and Moony are pranking the Ministry to get a hold of you and Harry."

He smiled back at the bedridden man's sudden grin of understanding.

"Listen," he continued, "now that you're awake, they'll probably ask a lot of questions. Pretend you didn't see anyone. We'll come and get you soon."

When the doors blew inwards thirty seconds later, Sirius was pretending to be asleep and Harry was already gone.

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ Thanks for reading! Please leave a review, even a single sentence of criticism is helpful!

→ Regarding one concern some people have had: I have quite a bit planned plotwise, but it's early days yet. There are four specific 'cool stuff' devices I intend to use, but the story is _not_ going to focus exclusively on magic/technology.


	7. Breaking out is hard to do

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter seven: Breaking out is hard to do**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

"_Finite_." Remus waved his wand over the vibrant green gown, and Harry's transfiguration spell faded, leaving his regular grey clothes.

"Moony in a dress," Young Harry burbled.

"Moony was in a dress," Lupin sighed. "Sadly, not for the first time, but hopefully for the last."

"Never say die, Moony. Juice?" Harry ambled through the doorway, a bottle in one hand and several mugs in the other.

"Thanks, yes."

"Juice, Harry?"

"Juice!"

"I'll take that as a _yes_, then."

"Yes!"

"How was he?" Lupin asked.

Harry poured three mugs. "Awake and talking, if a bit confused. I got him to sign the forms, so that's our safeguard in place if the Ministry finds us."

"Talking? That's good. Did he say much?"

"He thought I was my dad, and wanted to know whether you hated him and why Harry got stuck with the Dursleys."

Lupin nodded and sipped, then made a face. "I'm sure this was apple juice when I bought it."

"I transfigured it into pumpkin juice."

"I hate that stuff. You realise Hogwarts is practically the only place in Britain that actually serves it?"

"I assume Dumbledore's preparing to start a cartel, by getting the students hooked before their brains are developed enough to know it. Where does it come from, then?"

"The house elves make it from those huge pumpkins Ogg and Hagrid grow."

"I never met Ogg. Before my time. But I remember Hagrid's pumpkins from every Halloween." Harry frowned, and put down the mug. "I just had a vivid image of house elves juicing pumpkins with their feet, like wine-makers."

Lupin winced. "Speaking of rampant insanity, did Padfoot seem ...all there? People can go mad in Azkaban pretty easily, and even his dog form can't have protected him fully. Your younger self has just dribbled juice on your pants, by the way."

Harry grimaced and conjured a sponge. "I only had a few minutes with him, Moony, and I'd only just brought him round. He didn't do anything weird, although he thought he was dead at first."

"Okay. Well, we'll see. Any trouble from the Aurors?"

"Nope. Elder wand plus the element of surprise." Harry sank down on the sofa, still dabbing at his trouserleg. "Thank god it's Friday." The toddler Harry took the opportunity to wipe his face on the other leg.

Remus smiled faintly and sat down on the armchair opposite. "Given what you've done in the last fortnight, I thought you were some sort of machine."

"Nope. I've got my sights on a three-year holiday once all this is over."

Hermione rolled her eyes from her portrait above the fireplace. "You're going to be helping to bring up a child, remember?"

"Crap."

"So what's the schedule for the weekend?" Remus asked. "Round up all the Death Eaters, destroy Voldemort's soul, find his inferius weapon, afternoon tea, institute regime change at the Ministry, then an evening in front of the telly?"

"Har har," Harry said, picking up the toddler and plonking him in his lap along with his sipper cup. "You're a mucky pup, you know that?" He addressed the child.

"No," he continued to Moony, "I did have a personal project to work on tomorrow, and I wanted it ready by the time we got Sirius out of hospital. But since he was so lucid, I might push our schedule ahead by a few days and bring him back here tomorrow."

"What? Seriously? How?"

"You'll see."

"Why change the day?" said Hermione, frowning slightly. "We already planned this out. You don't even know if he should be discharged so soon."

"Well, he's awake now. I'm sure the Healers are only keeping him in on the Ministry's orders, and it's not like we won't make sure he keeps up appointments with a mind Healer until he's better. But if we get him tomorrow, he can recover among friends. And then there's the element of surprise, too."

Lupin and Hermione each arched an eyebrow, almost in concert.

"Well, there is," Harry protested. "They'll never expect me to break into the hospital _again_ the very next morning!"

Remus sighed, and scratched his head. "What project?"

"Huh?"

"What was the project you were going to work on?"

"Oh, right." Harry smiled and drew himself up proudly. "I-"

"Animagus transformation," said Hermione.

Harry pouted. "You ruined my big moment."

"Animagus? Really? That's great! You never mentioned you were following in your father's footsteps. What's your form?"

"_Silencio_," said Harry hurriedly, pointing his wand at Hermione's portrait, and then at the locket around his neck. "It's a surprise and _nobody_ is to _spoil_ it. I'll show you and Sirius in a few days, once I'm finished. I've almost got it, I just need to learn how to transform at will, instead of using the meditation and spell each time."

"Siletty-o," younger Harry chuckled. His older form patted him on the head in approval.

Remus was frowning. "That last part – mastering the transformation – took James a week, and he was faster than either Sirius or Peter."

Harry waved his hand dismissively. "He was what, fifteen? Anyway, I'll just take a few extra relative days using a time turner. Lock myself in a different spare room each time."

Lupin blinked. "Oh, so _that's_ how you're finding the time to do everything."

"Harry James Potter!" Hermione's voice suddenly yelled from her portrait upstairs. "Unsilence my pictures right now or I'll tell Remus not just your animagus form, but that you're scared of pixies!"

"...You're scared of pixies?"

Harry sighed and waved his wand at the locket around his neck.

"I'm not scared of pixies."

"He is," Hermione said, appearing in the portrait and looking smug.

"I'm not! They- they have these tiny hands, okay? And – look, just shut up. I'm not really scared of them, they just freak me out. Your _boggart_ is a _full moon_."

"That's a low blow," Moony scowled.

* * *

Harry flicked his fluorescent lighter, and green sparks roared out of the wide brazier.

"Green for go."

"Good," Hermione said. "But screw the casing back on, the last thing you need is to trip over some wires and get stranded."

"Very true." Harry wiggled the curved brass plate into place, then sent the screws into place with a flick of his wand. "What would I do without you, Hermione? Don't answer that. There - done, and dusted." He dusted his hands to demonstrate, and kicked a handful of spare parts under the kitchen table.

"Did you check each connection?"

"Yup."

"Do you have your Floo powder?"

"Yes, mom."

"Oh, don't pretend that you wouldn't forget things like that if I didn't remind you."

Harry grinned at her, then looked across to Lupin, who was watching with amusement. "Okay. I've reconnoitred the hospital-"

"With the number of times you've broken in, they should really just install a door with your name on it. A _revolving_ door." Hermione warmed to her topic. "And perhaps the name could be on a tasteful bronze plate like the doctors' offices have. Harry Potter, MD."

"MD?"

"Menace, Damnable," Remus supplied.

Harry shook his head, and began again. "I've reconnoitred the hospital, and there's only one way we're getting in. They seem to have detected the pattern, since they've stepped up security yet again. Anti-Apparition, anti-Portkey, probity probes, mirrors of True Seeing, the works."

"Honestly. Don't they have dark wizards to catch?" Hermione asked scornfully.

"To be fair, I probably seem – well, if not _dark_, then at least _rogue_. You know, what with stunning all those DMLE officers..."

Remus sighed. "With everything you've done, the Unspeakables are probably after you. Are you _certain_ they can't detect your time-turning shenanigans?"

"No."

"Okay. Well, if we're not going soon, you'd better go redo the child ward in the living room."

"We're going, we're going. Keep your pants on."

"So are you going to tell me what this is for?"

Remus tapped one finger against the large engine he was sitting on. It looked like a hefty tractor engine, but was painted bright blue.

Harry walked over with the brazier in his arms, and deposited the metal bowl on top of the engine. "Yup. It's for getting in." With a swish of his wand, the engine roared into life, then quietened to a busy purr.

"That's particularly obtuse of you. What about your, er, disguise? Care to explain that?"

Harry adjusted said disguise. "Nope."

He glanced at his watch, and read aloud, "_Sirius: hospital bed; Higgs Memorial Ward_. Ah. Clever. Looks like they moved him to a completely different room." He tapped his wand repeatedly against the side of the engine, mumbling "H-i-g-g-s-M-e-m-o-r-i-a-l-W-a-r-d," as he did so.

"Are you holding on tightly, Moony?"

Remus adjusted his grip on the thrumming engine. "You haven't said what it's going to do, yet."

"This."

The engine roared.

The kitchen emptied.

* * *

They reappeared in a hospital room.

"_Expelliarmus_! _Stupefy_! Ha, got you. _Stupefy_! _Impedimenta_! Yeah, eat that."

Harry sent a volley of weaker nonverbal stunners between each of his spells, and had taken down all three of the Aurors before Remus had even relaxed his death grip on the engine.

The werewolf blinked at the white lights, rows of beds, and trio of unconscious wizards. "What the hell was that? Some kind of weird portkey?"

Harry was sealing up the door. The alarm had been raised almost immediately, but his transfiguration of the entire wall and doorway into a lattice of steel and titanium should work. It had practically drained his magical energy, but would take quite some time to dispel. He cast a final variant of the _Impervius_ charm which Dumbledore had suggested, and turned away from the wall.

"You know the Knight Bus? Turns out Australia has the same system, except they have a couple of vans trundling round the whole continent. I bought up an old engine from the company, at an extravagant price, and brought it back in time."

"Why would that let us- wait, how _does_ the Knight Bus work?" Remus frowned. "I've never really thought about it."

"It's a funny thing," Harry said, adjusting his disguise again. "When wizards want to travel, they always think of broomsticks, Apparition and Flooing. But there's so many esoteric alternatives – phoenixes, portkeys, thestrals, Vanishing cabinets, house elf apparition, flying carpets …and the Knight Bus."

"Essentially, the Knight Bus Apparates into commute-space, and then just drops out back into real space according to an algorithm that reads muggle signposts," Hermione said from Harry's neckline. "Things like anti-apparition wards won't even _detect_ it coming in, let alone stop it, since the entry is only the _cessation_ of a magical effect."

Remus scratched his head. "But they'll stop it getting out, if it Apparates to- whatever you said."

"Which is why we have the portable Floo, since it has the exact opposite problem," Hermione was saying. "It can travel _from_ anywhere, but only goes to places we've specially set up."

Harry had walked over to the sole occupied bed in the room. The gaunt figure of his godfather was slowly clapping in admiration.

Remus followed him. "Hello, Padfoot. You're looking well."

"Moony!"

The two clasped hands.

"Prongs says you ...know what happened? About us switching Secret Keeper?"

"He's not Prongs," Remus said, a note of sadness in his voice. "But yes, I know. We're here to bring you home, Sirius, unless you're having too much fun watching the nurses come and go."

"They're all old and gnarly," Sirius said, eyes a little wild. "Old nurses! They never tell you about _those_ before you go and land yourself in Hospital. They could halve their intake!"

"I suppose they can't afford to lose the business."

"As much as I hate to break up your reunion," Harry broke in, looking pleased that the two had immediately started conversing, "That sound of muffled spellfire means we have to speed things up a little."

Sirius looked at him in confusion, and with good cause.

Harry was wearing an outrageous moustache, obviously fake. The first clue was the pink plastic nose it was attached to. And then there was the elastic.

_Why_ he would be wearing an obviously fake disguise was unclear, especially since he had _also_ gone to the effort to magically grow a huge, lush beard on his chin.

Harry beamed down at him, and waggled the plastic moustache. "Pretty good, huh?"

"James-" Sirius shook his head. "Whoever you are. ...Alright, I'll bite. Why a horrendously _fake_ moustache and a _real_-looking beard?"

Harry leaned in close. "This way, if I'm seen, they'll only notice the ridiculous moustache part of my disguise. So they'll assume the beard is real! Then they go off chasing after a man with a beard. By which time I've shaved it off."

Sirius nodded slowly.

Remus stared at Harry for a moment, then turned. "Come on, Padfoot, up you get."

"I'm not sure I can walk." Sirius rubbed distractedly at his side. "The Healers put me on muscle restorers, muscle relaxants and muscle bloody everything once they saw I was awake."

"Fine. I'll help you." Lupin reached out, then paused and wrinkled his nose. "If you're naked under those sheets, now's the time to say."

Padfoot lifted the blanket and peeked. "No... but I think it's one of those open-backed hospital gowns."

Lupin grimaced. "Delightful."

"Allow me." Harry leaned over, tugged down the sheets, and transfigured Sirius' hospital clothing into a tracksuit. "Now, let's blow this Ice Mice stand."

His walk back to the engine turned into a jog as a _boom_ shook the room. The wall suddenly dented inwards. Someone was yelling some sort of demand on the other side, but it was too muffled for them to hear it properly.

A shrinking charm turned the engine into a curious paperweight, which Harry put in his pocket, and he lit the brazier.

Remus staggered up with Sirius in a fireman's lift.

"Padfoot, tuck your arms and legs in, or you'll clip the sides of the fireplace. Just stand in the dish, Remus, and Floo like normal." Harry fumbled in his pouch for a handful of Floo powder, and threw it into the flames."

Moony stepped into the dish without hesitation, groaning under Sirius' weight, and called, "Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place!"

Harry caught the start of Padfoot's anguished wail as the pair disappeared.

* * *

Harry fell out of the fireplace, landing heavily on Moony and Padfoot, who were grumbling on the tiles.

A moment later, the brazier itself tumbled out after him, unfolding from a peculiar chrysanthemum shape in the middle of a ball of green flames. It rolled across the kitchen floor, setting fire to Lupin's trousers.

"That Floo thing," Remus said, struggling out from under Sirius, "Is really, really clever. _Aguamenti_."

"It hijacks the nearest Floo connection," Harry said, sitting up and brushing soot off his clothes. "Lets you jump in, as long as there's nobody currently using it. Unfortunately, it causes haywire with the grid unless it's been specially upgraded to work with roaming connections. I probably knocked out the Floo of half of London just now. No idea how it works, I'm not sure even Hermione knows all the ins and outs. "

"I'm getting there."

"So how did...?" Remus began, helping Sirius prop himself up against the table. "Oh, you _can_ stand, you great git."

"The Canadians invented it, at some point in the future, since they rely on Floo a lot."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. It's quite fascinating. The Americans learn Apparition very early, because they don't have a public Floo network at all. The Europeans, on the other hand, use some clockwork system the Swiss developed. And there's this thing they have in India, where they draw these concentric circles with coloured sand..."

Harry met Padfoot's eyes gravely. "It's not too late to go back to St Mungo's, you know."

* * *

Sirius wasn't sure exactly where he was. He'd thought it was meant to be the Black home, but there were _colours_ around him.

Moony and the man with the stupid beard who looked like Prongs were helping him to a bed, that bit he understood. The stairs were difficult to navigate, and everything was so weirdly _clean_.

He also had no idea why they had arrived at the first floor landing, only to have a portrait of a young lady with bushy hair shout "_PUREBLOODS! PUREBLOOD SCUM IN MY HOUSE!_" and then grin infectiously at him.

But he recognised the small grey creature that had popped onto the stairs in response and was staring avidly at him.

"Please let this be a bad dream."

"Oh, dear," Hermione muttered.

"Kreacher was _tricked_," the house elf squealed, hopping from one foot to the other and wringing at his ears. "Oh, how Kreacher was _cruelly_ tricked. Kreacher was promised a magnificent new Lord Black, not the wretched, traitorous scion. Take it back! Bring a new one! A fresh Lord Black for Kreacher!"

"Oh gods," Sirius moaned. "Oh Merlin, kill me now. Not Kreacher too, on top of the ancestral home. I don't want to have to deal with this."

"Do you realise he was on the same side as your Master Regulus, fighting Voldemort?" Harry asked the house elf brightly.

"Does not matter. Was cast out. Was blood traitor. Was..." Kreacher's hand began inching towards a heavy-looking vase standing on a plinth.

"Kreacher! Go to Regulus' room and stay there!" Sirius managed.

The house elf began to turn an angry red colour, but snapped his fingers and disappeared.

* * *

Remus and Harry negotiated Sirius up the stairs between them, and he collapsed into a bed in the master bedroom. "Legs a bit iffy still," he admitted. "Give me a few days. Now, really this time, who are you? You're _not_ James," he said, looking grimly at Harry. "James was an idiot when it came to engines. He thought my motorcycle ran via tiny dragons. So, the question is, who?"

Harry grinned wildly, and stroked his lush false beard. "As you can see, I'm Hairy at the moment, but what I don't understand is - why are you looking so Serious?"

Padfoot's serious look disappeared, to be replaced with the more familiar one of one of tired confusion.

"I'll tell you all about it once you're rested," Harry smiled. He took in the strain lines on Sirius' face. "For now, listen to this." He opened a small music box, and left it to play its strange tune on the bedside table.

Remus yawned, and quickly left the room, Harry on his heels.

Sirius drifted off immediately.

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ As always, thanks for reading and I'd love to hear from you in a review. Fame and glory to anyone who guesses Harry's animagus form!


	8. Confusion

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter eight: Confusion**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

"Well, now I see why you didn't just send Kreacher in to get him," Remus said, picking up a book and fidgeting with it. The pile of books in front of him slowly toppled over.

"If I thought there was a chance in hell I could convince him to, I would have tried. It would have been _so_ much easier. But Sirius has always loathed him, too, so..."

"Not really worth trying, right." Remus opened the book and scanned the pages. "How long are you going to leave him to sleep?"

"At least until this evening. We'll see how he goes with learning about time travel, meeting Harry, dealing with Kreacher... all that stuff."

"Right. Um, what are we looking for, exactly?"

Harry looked at him over the top of _Saul Bloodthorpe's Big Booke of Darke Spelles_. "Hermione?"

"We'll hold onto any books with really esoteric spells, dark or not," she said. "Then you can go through them later to see if there's anything interesting. Keep all potions and runes books, throw out any political tracts we missed, and hang onto the more official-looking history and genealogy books so we can fabricate a past for Harry. Valuable, non-dark books can be sold, but anything with curses on it or which you wouldn't want in Death Eater hands will have to be b- b-"

"Burned," Harry supplied.

Hermione winced. "Yes. That."

Lupin looked at the toppled pile of about fifty books. "What sort of 'useful' things are you hoping to find?"

Harry put his tome neatly on the coffee table, and looked seriously over his spectacles.

"I made an agreement with Dumblepainting, when I came back, that I'd do this with as little blood shed as possible. That was a real sticking point of his, and personally I'm happy with it. But I'm not just going to let people like Malfoy, Nott and Yaxley walk around free. They've done some horrific things in the past, and the Ministry sure isn't going to bring them to justice. I'm sure they didn't give up muggle baiting just because Voldemort was sent packing, so whether the Dork Lord rises again or not, they have to be dealt with."

"So, what? You're going to start your own private jail?"

Harry locked eyes with Hermione for a moment. "No. Do you remember I showed you my memories of taking Gilderoy Lockhart to the Chamber of Secrets? In second year?"

"What's that got- _oh_." Remus frowned. "Irreversible spell damage?"

"Bingo."

"That seems somewhat haphazard."

"It's the best idea I've got. But I'd rather _not_ have to experiment by just pouring way too much power into memory charms. A spell to cause permanent amnesia would be ideal. Hence, looking through the old spellbooks."

"What about... blackmailing them into making some sort of binding magical oath?"

"Unfortunately, most of my knowledge of their atrocities is from things that they've done in the future. On the other hand, there's always Veritaserum."

"You can brew _Veritas_- oh, silly me. Of _course_ you can brew Veritaserum. Snaperies." Remus shook his head. "There are a tiny handful of potions masters in the country. You could make a living off it easily, you know."

"Yep. Anyway, if we can find some ancient family secrets that might help-"

"Hold up." Remus had lifted his head at a faint sound. "Somebody's knocking at the door."

* * *

Auror Jenkins gripped his wand tightly as the door creaked open. It had taken an hour just to _find_ the house, let alone get through the wards. The place was sealed up as tight as a fortress, and that made him suspicious.

"We don't want any," an unfamiliar man said from the gloom.

"I'm not selling anything."

"We _still_ don't want any."

"Auror Jenkins, Department of Magical Law Enforcement." Jenkins tapped the badge on his cloak.

"Oh. Here to sell justice?"

"Uh- in a manner of speaking. I'm investigating an abduction and several disturbances. Identify yourself, please."

"Come in, Mr Jenkins."

The Auror stepped forward – heard "We _still_ don't want any" – wheeled as a young woman's voice screamed into his ear – heard a muttered spell – suddenly felt very fuzzy.

_Why do I feel so strange?_ Jenkins puzzled.

The man standing in the unlit hall took a step backwards. "You were just leaving, Mr Jenkins."

_Of course_, that was it. A feeling of relief washed over him. _He was just leaving_. "I was just leaving."

"These are not the droids you are looking for."

Jenkins' brow wrinkled. "These are ...not the 'droids' I am... looking for?"

"We can go about our business."

Jenkins glanced down in confusion at the animated pink pastel sock pattern of the hall carpet. The socks seemed to be clustering eagerly about his feet. "You... can... I... wait, who- who are you?"

The female voice on the wall sighed in exasperation. "Do it again, properly, you idiot."

"Fine. _Confundus_. You were just leaving, Mr Jenkins. The house shows no sign of habitation. Sirius Black is not here..."

* * *

"Easier than the Imperius and twice as legal. So, confounding hex: most useful and versatile spell in existence? Yea or nay."

"Nay", said Hermione thoughtfully. "The Patronus can be used offensively, defensively, as a distraction, as a cheering charm, as a messenger..."

"Nay," said Moony. "Anti-itching charm. Much better than trying to reach the small of your back with the tip of your wand. And useful in ...some other circumstances too."

Harry made a face.

"Do you think the Aurors will be back?" Remus asked.

"I doubt it. If I recall, the Ministry was almost at its peak inefficiency at this point. And they don't really have any reason to hold Sirius now that he's been exonerated. I'm more worried about the Healers." Harry shivered.

"They can be quite formidable when a patient doesn't do what they want, can't they?"

"Formidable? Huh. The only difference between a Healer and a Hungarian Horntail is that there's at least a _chance_ the Horntail will forgive or forget."

* * *

Saturday evening saw Lupin and Harry sitting by Sirius' bedside, going through more of the Black library books. Sirius didn't wake until after nightfall, giving them the chance to feed him and introduce Young Harry.

To general glee, the toddler recognised Padfoot immediately, leaping on the bed with demands that they fly their 'brumpsticks'. Sirius, laughter creasing the corners of his eyes, recalled how he would help Harry hold onto the tiny broomstick his father bought him – a low speed thing with handlebars and cushioning charms. The boy was flying with only minor assistance before he could toddle.

"How Lily hated it when the three of you rocketed around the house," Remus said, shaking his head. "She was always afraid Harry would go down the stairs and fall off or something."

"Prongs was definitely the worst, though," Sirius grinned. "If Lils knew the number of time her great-aunt's vase had to be repaired... all the replastering we did... and the number of bruises James _claimed_ he got in the line of duty..."

He glanced at the older Harry in confusion for a moment, then blinked rapidly. "He's dead, isn't he," the recovering man said quietly. "Both of them are."

The other men rested hands on Sirius' shoulders, as Young Harry puttered about at the foot of the bed.

"We're all together now, the rat's in the holding cells, Harry's not with the Dursleys, and that's what's important."

"Dursleys..." Sirius' lips moved. "Can I borrow your wand? Thanks," he added as Remus hesitantly handed it over.

The man flipped it over to point at his other rescuer. "Who are you really? No trick answers, this time."

Harry smiled, and stood up. "My name is Harry James Potter, and I've been addicted to saving people for negative twenty years..."

* * *

Sirius dozed off again several hours later, and they left him to sleep, one of Hermione's portraits on the dresser nearby just in case.

It had taken a magical vow, the word of Dumbledore's portrait, and an impromptu pensieve session to convince him that the story was true, and the twenty-two-year-old James-lookalike was, in fact, the same Harry Potter as the one attacking his ankles with Moony's wand.

They had kept the tone light, steering away from the reasons for Harry's jaunt back in time. But Sirius had been an Auror, and despite being convalescent, it was obvious he knew there were dark secrets being left unspoken. A glance at Young Harry ambling around left him content enough to leave them for later.

Padfoot was greatly enamoured with his two godsons and what he was already regarding as a great prank on the past, but the excitement wore him out again, and he drifted from consciousness.

* * *

Sirius woke on Sunday morning to the smell of bacon frying. After pulling on a simple robe he found in the wardrobe, he made his way down the stairs, occasionally steadying himself on the banister.

Remus had been to the bakery as the two Harries fried. Breakfast was a simple affair, but made convoluted by the very nature of the group at the table: a werewolf, a child celebrity, a time traveller, a reprieved criminal, and two unnervingly intelligent portraits.

Harry observed his Godfather carefully. Sirius was generally lucid, although he had blank, distant patches occasionally. Once or twice he gazed about the dining room in confusion, not realising where he was, before shaking his head sharply. But his spirits had improved rapidly, to the point where he was saying how his year in Azkaban had "given him a real perspective on things" and "was like a breath of fresh air, really".

Remus absconded with the last two cinnamon buns, refusing to share them until Padfoot admitted that his blithe attitude was nothing but a defence mechanism.

"Cinnamon buns!" the man squalled. "I've been without them through all my years of imprisonment, don't you dare deny them to me now!"

Harry snorted. "You didn't actually even spend a full year in jail. It was really more like ten and a half months. That's hardly cinnamon-bun-worthy emotional blackmail material."

At Sirius' wounded look, he added, "I'm just saying, there's nothing all that stoic about weathering Azkaban for ten months. That's- that's really pretty brief. Ten _years_, now _that_ would have been impressive."

"I'm a hardened criminal!" Sirius protested. "A year behind bars, baby."

"Pfff. You just had a long, unpleasant holiday."

It was at that point that he who was without cinnamon cast the first scone.

* * *

Two minutes later, Young Harry, whooping, held tight to Padfoot's ears as he chased Old Harry around the kitchen table. Remus retreated to the hall to scrape scrambled eggs off Albus' portrait, and Hermione sighed at the sheer quantity of marmalade on the walls.

* * *

"I don't want to deal with him," Sirius said sulkily from the sofa. Then he suddenly brightened up. "I could just order him to kill himself, right? Bam, problem solved."

"_Sirius!_"

Padfoot cowered before Hermione's scowl.

"Okay! Okay. Sheesh."

"He's improved a lot since we helped him finish his old master's mission by de-Horcruxing the locket. Nobody is ordering anybody to kill themselves," Harry cautioned.

"Okay, fine. Why don't we just keep him restricted to Regulus' room? He'd love that." Sirius looked hopeful.

"No. He really could turn over a new leaf, Sirius, if you'll just meet him halfway. Now stop pouting and call him."

"Fine. _Kreacher!_"

There was a crack, and the house elf appeared, immediately flinging a double handful of vibrant green mould slime at the new Lord Black.

"_Protego_. Damnit, I was sure we got rid of all of that. Kreacher, are you growing it somewhere?"

The elderly house elf wrinkled his nose at Harry, who cautiously dropped the magical shield. "No. It grows itself above the eaves of the roof, it does. Kreacher just scoops it up to throw at ugly smelly bad Masters."

Sirius wiped the flecks of rancid green gunk off his face with deceptive calm. "Kreacher, do you _want_ me to give you clothes?"

"Would rather die than serve bad Master," the creature muttered.

Harry sighed. "What if we put Sirius' name back on the Black family tapestry, move it up to Regulus' room, and file all the precious family documents there too? You could be in charge of maintaining them. Will you act appropriately then?"

Kreacher shifted on his feet but remained silent.

Sirius scowled. "What if I throw in this exclusive, one-time offer: when the time comes for me to order you to make yourself a House Black uniform, the new design _won't_ involve ribbons, floral patterns, or the colour pink."

"Done," the house elf rasped, before bowing obsequiously. "Kreacher _lives_ to serve _cough_bad_cough_ Master"

"Shake hands, you two," Hermione ordered.

Both parties opened their mouths.

"_Do it_."

Both parties closed their mouths.

Moony appeared in the doorway, Young Harry on his shoulders, and took in the grimaces accompanying the extremely brief handshake. "How touching. Sirius, if you're up to it, you can look over the redecorations today. And by 'look over', I mean 'complain about'."

"Why would you think I care?" the dark-haired man sulked.

"Because you had an hour-long tantrum when you were mooching off James' parents and they threw out your dead pot plant without asking?"

Padfoot looked scandalised. "That wasn't just a pot plant, that was _Eric_. Eric was special."

"Eric was dead."

Harry shook his head, making a mental note to hear that story some time. "Sirius, I should mention that we had to destroy a lot of dark objects in the house when we were cleaning up. A lot of them were just the sort of sick dross that piles up when you leave an insane house elf alone in a traditionally dark house, but some of them might have been valuable heirlooms. If you want me to pay..."

He trailed off. Sirius was staring at him in bemusement.

"Are you kidding? I used to feel like _torching_ this place. Now I just want to sell it to a colourblind old lady with too many knick-knacks for her own good."

Harry blinked. "Okay. Um. I assume they destroyed your wand when you were arrested. Once you've got a new one, you can make your own changes to the décor."

Sirius looked around the living room. The walls and ceiling were each painted a different shade of yellow. The large coffee table was an elaborate conglomerate of metal and crystal. The bookcase appeared to be made entirely out of empty firewhiskey bottles.

"It's not too bad as it is. And I can always fall back on good old fire."

"Wait, you were actually serious?"

Remus groaned at this easy line.

"I've always been Sirius. No, but honestly, I should be paying you and Moony for the cleaning service. I just don't much want to live here, is all."

"It's the safest place I can imagine for Young Harry to live," Hermione admonished. "Your father placed every defence on the book on it. Unplottable, unscryable, good-will wards, charms of unassailability, anti-burglar curses..."

"Fine, fine. I'll stay." Sirius glanced past Remus at the stairs. "I'm going to put in a slide, though."

"_Brilliant_," Harry breathed, eyes lighting up.

"We also need you to revisit the ward schemas, once you're recovered," Lupin said to Sirius, ignoring the child pulling his hair.

"I am recovered."

"Are you sure? Your face looks a bit ...green."

Kreacher wisely popped away. Harry quickly changed the subject. "Speaking of defences and redecoration, I had an idea about some more renovations..."

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ This chapter was originally almost twice as long as the others, so I split it in two shortish ones. Thanks for reading and reviewing, everyone.


	9. Marauding

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter nine: Marauding**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

Remus and Sirius stepped down into the wine cellar behind Harry, leaving Hermione to watch Young Harry in the living room. The dank, low-ceilinged cellar was now empty apart from the racks of old wine bottles. Harry gestured at them.

"These can easily be moved," he said. "Now, I thought, since there's a door at both the top and bottom of the steps, and it's all solid stonework, we could make this a safe room. For you to use, Moony, on full moons."

The werewolf looked uncomfortable. "I really can't justify transforming in a house with a toddler, especially since I can't always afford the Wolfsbane Potion."

Harry looked at him, puzzled. "I can brew it."

Remus blinked. "Oh. Oh, of course you could. I- thank you."

Sirius slapped him on the back. "I'll still stay with you, Moony, don't worry about- oh, wow, that's some _really_ fancy spellwork, Prongs. I mean Harry, sorry. Merlin, is that _permanent _transfiguration?"

Harry lowered the elder wand again. The door at the top of the stones steps was now of seasoned oak, two planks thick, bound by steel strips a handspan apart. It had a bar and a lock on each side. The ceiling and walls of the cellar had been transfigured into padded leather, enchanted a pale, calming blue.

"It sure is. There's a trick to permanent conjuration and transfiguration, I'll show you some time. What colour carpet, Moony?"

"Don't bother. I'd just scratch it to shreds the first time." The greying man rubbed his face, looking sheepish.

"Well, I'll just fix it up then."

"Cream."

"Cream it is." Harry flicked the wand, and a hairy puddle appeared in the middle of the stone floor. It rippled, and quickly expanded into a shag carpet.

"That's really more off-white," Sirius criticised, as the obscenely quivering mass reached the walls and flattened out. "Or pale egg-shell."

Harry gave him a deliberately condescending look, then turned to Remus. "I might get a Gringotts contractor to make us another door for the bottom of the steps, to be absolutely certain. Made of stone, with steel bars and a more complex lock. It might come in handy, for keeping... other guests, from time to time."

Moony raised his eyebrows. "That didn't sound creepy at all."

Harry wiggles his own eyebrows in response. "Just taking what you said about a private jail to heart. Hopefully, we'll never have to use it as one. Oh, and while I think of it, Crayon-Dumble's been teaching me the Fidelius Charm, too."

He turned back to Sirius. "Now that you're up and about, you can help me cast it on the property. Now that you're back as the heir, I can't do it myself. The existing wards only barely recognise me as a Black family member."

Sirius looked back at him in puzzlement. "Oh – because I made you my heir in the future, but now I've replaced you again?"

"I assume so. Now, we'll make the main Fidelius a general safety net, and tell the secret to everyone we trust. Then we can make Young Harry's bedroom a safe room, by putting another Fidelius on that which only we four can get into."

"It's possible to nest Fidelius Charms like that?" Remus' eyes lit up. "Intriguing – I had no idea. What if you set up two conflicting charms and their fields interfered? Or put one Fidelius on a mobile position, and moved it in or out of another?"

"You should probably talk to Hermione and the Old Man about it," Harry shrugged. "The theory is pretty complex, and I'm mainly interested in the wandwork."

Remus nodded, and a thought struck him. "Maybe we could have another safe room for Young Harry to sleep in on full moons," he suggested. "And you two keep the secret from me. Just in case."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "Overkill. Let's just teach the kid to be an Animagus. Then Moony could roam the house as he liked. It worked for us Marauders, right?"

"He's two years old, Sirius."

"Yeah, but it'll help my recovery if I don't get confused by having two people called 'Harry' in the same house."

Harry suddenly looked a little nervous. "If it helps, I've pretty much finished my animagus form now, so I'll think of a nickname you can call me by, right?"

Sirius brightened up immediately. "_Oh_ no. You don't get to choose your own Marauder name. You really think 'Moony' wanted to be called that?"

Lupin glared at him.

"I'm glad you're following in your dad's footsteps, though," Sirius continued eagerly. "What's your form?"

* * *

Remus cocked his head to the side and watched the white rabbit on the kitchen table proudly raise itself up on its haunches. The black rings around its eyes and jagged orange patch of fur on its head left no doubt as to the animal's identity. Sirius was on his back kicking his legs in the air, cackling uncontrollably.

Moony put a thoughtful finger to his lips. "I'm going to have to say we call him..."

* * *

"Fluffybits."

* * *

"Fuzzyface," Sirius countered, managing to get his spluttering under control. The rabbit made an indignant high-pitched noise, which set him off again.

"Squeaker," Lupin said firmly.

"Thumper."

"Tinypaws."

Harry struggled back into his human form, and fell off the table. "I am _not_ going to be called Tinypaws," he growled.

"You've still got whiskers."

"Shit." Harry squeezed his face in concentration until they were gone.

"Maybe... 'Creampuff'?" Sirius asked innocently, struggling to his feet and then giving Harry a hand up.

"Flopsy."

Harry sighed.

"Bunnyface."

"Bobtail," Remus suggested.

Sirius made a face. "Too much like Wormtail."

"True. 'Prettywhiskers', then."

"Nah. He wants something manly like 'Bucktooth'."

Harry groaned and put his hands over his face.

"Brer."

Sirius looked confused, but let that one pass. "Cottonpaw."

"Flopears."

"Pinky."

"March."

Sirius frowned. "Why 'March'?"

"As in, 'Mad as a March Hare'."

"Muggle stuff?"

"Muggle stuff."

"I still prefer 'Creampuff'."

"Hopper."

"Tinkles."

"How about 'Jackalope'?"

Sirius open his mouth in rebuttal, then paused. "What the hell is that?"

"It's a mythical American rabbit."

"A magical rabbit? That's ridiculous."

"_Mythical_, not magical. Nonexistent. Made up," Remus elucidated. "It's a muggle myth, like the vegetable lamb or the wild Scots haggis."

"Hey, I caught a haggis once," Sirius protested. "Remember? Hogwarts, sixth year. I chased it down as Padfoot, fought it, and ate it still struggling! You can't stand there and tell me the wild haggis isn't real."

Lupin sighed. "We established, remember, that was a huge pork-and-suet pudding the house elves threw out after it lay around so long that it went off. It might have been a bit more ...full of life than you'd ideally want a meat-based dish to be, but it did _not_ put up a fight."

"It did!"

"It might have fermented a bit, but that's all."

"I almost lost an eye," Sirius said sulkily.

"Whatever. 'Jackalope', yea or nay? I know it's too many syllables, but it's a _rabbit_ with _antlers_, and it's more appropriate than 'Pronglet'."

"I've already vetoed 'cub' and 'pup' as mildly patronising terms of endearment. Let me be crystal clear: 'Pronglet' is every bit as bad," Harry said sternly, waving his wand menacingly.

Sirius sighed, still pouting. "Well, 'Jackalope' is okay, I guess. We can just shorten it to 'Jack', I can handle that."

Harry shrugged. "Better than Flopears."

Remus smiled. "'Jack' it is, then. I suppose now all that remains is to sneak into Hogwarts, invade Filch's office and add his name to the Map."

* * *

"So is he going to register?"

Hermione beamed down as the newly-christened Jack struggled futilely in his younger self's grip. "It's a misdemeanour not to, worth a small fine. Using an unregistered Animagus form to commit a criminal act automatically adds a week in Azkaban to any conviction."

She winced as Harry managed to dangle the squirming rabbit upside down. "Given that all you need is spare time and a potion to find out if you have an animal form, and there's a big incentive to keep a useful ability like that secret so you can use it in a tight spot, there's no surprise only seven wizards became registered Animagi this century. The real number is probably fifty times that."

"So... that's a 'no'?" Sirius hid a smile as the toddler began to wring the rabbit's long, floppy ears.

Hermione sighed. "Harry _never_ does things by the book."

* * *

"So, do you need help getting revenge on the Dursleys?" Sirius' grey eyes glittered dangerously.

"Revenge? Nah."

"You're not doing _anything_, Harry?" Remus interjected.

"Jack."

"Damn it, this is going to take some getting used to. _Jack_."

"No," Formerly-Harry continued, "They've only given me a year of abuse here. Since I wiped the future clean, it wouldn't be right for me to punish them for things they haven't actually done."

Hermione beamed down at him.

He beamed back up at her. "But now that you mention it, I _did_ have the excellent idea of waiting till Dudders is school age, then putting a permanent muggle-repelling charm on him."

Sirius boggled. "But that... surely it would... couldn't it stop him... wouldn't it?"

* * *

"Harry, what-"

"Jack."

"Right, Jack. Damn it, damn it." Sirius muttered.

"I think you should have to pay a forfeit each time you say it."

"Jack Jack Jack Jackity Jackalope Jack Jacking well Jack. _Jack_, what aren't you telling me? About the future, and why you came back?"

The emerald-eyed Jack added two pinches of hydrated brimstone to the cauldron in front of him, applied a stasis charm, and looked carefully over at Sirius. In one day, the man's behaviour had made leaps and bounds towards what he remembered from the future. He was recovered enough to hear the full story.

"Okay. It began with the Battle at Hogwarts..."

* * *

Sirius shook his head and wiped his hand across his face. It came back wet.

"Hell," he said hoarsely. "Think I must be allergic to that mould gunk of Kreacher's." He smiled nervously across at Harry-or-was-it-Jack, who just rolled his eyes in response.

"It's okay to cry, Padfoot. It doesn't make you any less of a man."

"I'm not crying! This – these are tears of _confusion_. You're going to have to go over the whole story again, in detail, when I'm drunk and more likely to believe it. And understand it."

"You're not allowed to drink until we've seen a Healer," Hermione said, causing Sirius to frown.

"Harry will be watching to make sure," she added.

"And me," said Harry-Jack pointedly.

"Oh, right. _Jack_ will be watching to make sure. Damn it," she said.

* * *

"Isn't the Animagus form meant to say something profound about the true nature of your inner self?"

Remus and Sirius looked appraisingly at the-Animagus-formerly-known-as-Harry.

Sirius opened his mouth. "Maybe he's got a one-track-mind when it comes to-"

"I'm going to assume it's because I 'hopped' back in time," Jack said hastily, conjuring ribbons of sparks to distract the toddler on the sofa. Then he scowled at Sirius, who laughed.

"Hell, if you're anything like your dad, Harry- oh, bugger. Jack."

Young Harry looked up from the sparks.

"Damnit," he said solemnly.

* * *

Smoothing over the disappearance of the Boy Who Lived into nothing more than an article in the Prophet speculating about "Harry Potter's adoptive family moving into their new safehouse" had taken some doing, even for Albus Dumbledore. His concern for the child had not abated, either, but a certain mysterious messenger seemed to think the boy was in good hands.

It was extremely troubling. As if he didn't have enough on his plate already, with Severus' incandescent fury over that embarassing incident at the staff table, and the latest Romanian hassles in the ICW.

But now he had managed to find the time to follow up on it. It was just past breakfast, he didn't have to be in the Ministry until mid-morning, and Minerva was completely capable of handling the day-to-day affairs at Hogwarts.

The Headmaster had struggled with his inner demons over this. But in the end it was no choice at all. He simply _had_ to meet this other Dumbledore, for the greater good of all. Regardless of what the letter said, he had to know. He needed to know _everything_ about what was going on, in case it impacted on Voldemort's inevitable return, or his own private project.

And certain signs – such as the strange lock-out of Phineas Nigellus – had pointed to the other Albus' presence here, in the quiet avenue of Grimmauld Place.

Dumbledore halted his stroll along the pavement, and looked up at a house.

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ Kudos to Worldmaker for probably having the closest Animagus guess. Not that a bunny form is _useless_ as such, but I think it makes a nice change from the magical forms Harry is usually saddled with.

→ Please note! I have gone back and done a little re-editing and cleanup on all the chapters up to and including this one, in preparation for _finally_ updating.

→ As always, thanks for reading, and if you have a comment, leave a review. I read them all, even if I don't often reply.


	10. Turning back the clock

_**Take Care Of Yourself**_

**Chapter ten: Turning back the clock**

[Characters and setting belong to J K Rowling. Everything else is my own.]

* * *

"Right now?"

The portrait of Dumbledore nodded, looking serious. "I fear that events are... eventuating," he said mysteriously. "We have delayed too long in wrapping up loose ends. Fortunately, Sirius does not need to take an active part in it, so you should be able to finish the charm today."

"Instead of wrapping up those _quote_ loose ends _unquote_," Jack-Formerly-Harry frowned.

"I am afraid so. There is always tomorrow, my boy. And I have some ideas how we can begin forming your new identity."

"Well, that's good." Harry shook his head. "I guess I'll get started now, then."

He drew his wand, and left the room.

Silence reigned for a few seconds after the door clicked shut, and then a figure dropped the invisibility cloak it had been holding up.

"Thanks, Albus."

"It was no problem at all, but you had better leave. You mustn't be seen here."

The figure nodded. "I will need some proper sleep, anyway, soon. Although I believe I have several potions to brew first, amongst other things."

"If you say so."

The figure nodded again, stepped forward, and hesitated. It asked, "What do you think prompted this, Albus?"

The portrait of the Headmaster peered down through half-moon spectacles. "I really can't imagine."

* * *

Jack stomped around the boundaries of the garden, wand held aloft, feeling ridiculous. Perhaps the reason the Fidelius Charm wasn't more widespread was that actually _casting_ it was more akin to riverdance than to a normal magic ritual.

With one hand, he grasped at the invisible key-string of the Black wards Sirius had given him full access to, lifting them where necessary to run the thin mesh of magic he was creating underneath. The Fidelius blossomed from the elder wand in ribbons of faint light as he swept it about, slowly weaving the magic together into a net over the whole house.

It was time-consuming, and extremely magically draining, and it didn't help that he kept almost losing control of the spell whenever he stepped on a rogue plant.

Harry paused, knee-deep in nasturtiums, to catch his breath for a moment. He would need a proper break soon. Luckily, he could just 'peg down' the charm with a few flicks of his wand, leaving it half-cast while he recovered. The Fidelius was so draining that nobody would ever have managed to cast it without such stops. Unless you used a whole team of powerful wizards working in shifts. Or maybe, _maybe_ unless you were Dumbledore.

Harry turned to regard the quiet street, and saw an unwelcome sight.

* * *

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore's feet were almost at the front gate when he locked eyes with a young man who looked very much like James Potter. The ancient wizard rocked back on his heels slightly.

He had almost been ready to see another version of himself, but not the dead risen. What was going on? Judging by the instant look of panic on the young man's face before he ducked down below the level of the overgrown hedge, something nefarious.

Dumbledore's wand appeared in his hand, and he strode towards the gate.

* * *

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit," Harry murmured in time with his windmilling arms as he tried to complete the spell. He had fallen to his knees. With his magical reserves as depleted as they were, he knew he had no chance of finishing the finicky Fidelius.

But if the real live Dumbledore became aware of what was going on, there would be oh so difficult questions, and probably the Department of Mysteries, and maybe a life in the spotlight _again_, and Young Harry taken away again 'for the Greater Good'. He wasn't going to lose _anyone_ this time.

The elder wand lay ridiculously heavy in his trembling palm. He had no hope of completing the spell.

He drew deeper on his magical core than he thought he could, and tried anyway.

Unconsciousness bore him away on gentle wings.

* * *

The gate flew open ahead of Dumbledore, who peered cautiously into the garden. He saw the youth fall, and set one foot on the gravel path inside the property. The house wards clustered about him, trying to stop his entry, but he pressed forward, planting another foot on the path.

Then he stepped back again in surprise as a second figure appeared, the silvery folds of an invisibility cloak clustering at his feet. The newcomer looked identical to the first, except a little more tired. For some reason, faint wisps of vapour were wafting from his nostrils.

The words of a Shield charm flew to the veteran wizard's lips, and he sunk into a duelling crouch.

The new James Potter lookalike raised a familiar-looking wand, and Dumbledore _felt_ the massive surge of power flow from him. Some great work of magic was being wrought here.

Dumbledore stepped back once more, almost to the gate, and prepared to flee or fight at a moment's notice.

The flow of energy wavered and halted in the channels of the charm. The second young man staggered, deathly pale, and dropped unconscious onto the body of the first.

* * *

Not a heartbeat had passed when a _third_ figure, identical to the first two in every way, appeared. Not from a cloak this time, but growing suddenly from a point of light in a manner Dumbledore recognised. It was absolutely not a mode of transportation anyone outside the grey hood of an Unspeakable or cowl of the Chief Warlock should have been using.

The latest figure looked about in confusion, then seemed to catch sight of Dumbledore, and poked his tongue out. He nodded to himself, raised his hands with a little shimmy like a dance move, and tweaked the strands of magic into their final positions. Dumbledore had a strange feeling, like he _ought_ to recognise the spell, and the words of a disarming hex were passing his lips when, abruptly, the net of magic settled. The charm finished.

The newcomer frowned down at the two slumbering bodies, then stepped over them towards the house, taking a slip of paper from his pocket.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore stepped back two steps, without really knowing why, and wondering why the sensation of the footpath beneath his stout boots felt so _off_. For some reason, he had a strong impression of a face – an oddly familiar face – and also a wrought iron gate.

Of course, he had just passed several wrought iron gates, all the same. Why was one of them so important?

His powerful mind struggled for a moment against an implacable force. There was something... about a place... and an appearance, or disappearance...

_Blast the vagaries of old age_, he thought.

Dumbledore sighed and turned away from contemplating the skyline, glad he had decided to take this refreshing walk. A change of scenery always expanded the horizons and oiled the mental gears, although he could probably have found a better place to wander past than this row of dirty brick houses in a dead-end street.

And now, he really _did_ have to get to the Ministry.

He hurried off.

* * *

"Up up up, come on. Sorry Harry, I mean Jack, but you've got to do this, the window of opportunity is really narrow."

"I... I don't wanna... what huh? What happened?" Jackalope Potter raised his head off the sofa. "Feels like I was... hit by a... rhinoceros. Rampagin'. Rampaged by a rhinoceros."

"Drink this."

"Mm... thanks, ah, Moony. I... was I drinking?" Jack tilted the flask, and immediately regretted it. "Pepper-up Potion? I thought we urgh. I thought we didn't have any left?"

"You just brewed it."

"Who?"

"You."

"I whuh?"

"Just brewed it."

Jack finished the rest of the potion, and shook himself, peppermint-flavoured steam pouring from his nose and ears. "Ah. Okay. That makes sense. Wait, I wasn't drinking, was I? I was trying to cast the Fidelius. I- Dumbledore's here!"

He staggered to his feet.

Remus folded his arms and frowned. "Yes, yes. Would you _listen_? It's been almost eight hours. You need to go back now, and finish the job."

"Go back? Oh... ah, I see. Wait, why couldn't you? Portrait-Dumbledore could have showed you the charm."

"You said it had to be you."

"I did?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Recently."

"Oh. Okay. How far back?"

Remus glanced up at the clock. "Seven hours. You'll need to go in exactly two minute and twenty-two seconds."

"Why not a full eight? These things can all go to a maximum of eight hours back in time. You could have let me sleep another hour. My magic still feels all loose and woolly. Speaking of sleep, who's that?"

Jack pointed to the copy of himself who lay unconscious on the sofa opposite, underneath the windows.

"You."

"Oh, I see. The me who's been giving all these orders, then?"

Remus winced. "No. Come on, follow me, you have to be back in the garden."

"Ah." Jack fumbled out his time-turner as they hurried down the stairs. "Timey-wimey stuff?"

"Timey-wimey stuff. By the way, do you have any idea why Sirius is upset with me for calling him a blast-ended screwball? I don't have any idea what that is, and I've certainly never called him one."

"No clue. Elaborate meta-joke? Dementia? I just hope it isn't timey-wimey stuff. Hey, look, the Fidelius Charm is done. Who did that?" Jack frowned at the powerful charm he could faintly detect around the property.

Remus gave him a pointed look.

"Oh, right. You know, I don't even know if I'll be able to finish casting it with my magic as diminished as it is."

"Too bad. You're going back anyway, since that's what happened. No, you need to stand right there. No, there, in that muddy patch."

"Fine. Now?" Jack began spinning the time-turner on its fulcrum.

"Eight seconds. Seven... Six... Five..."

"Wait, if I appear right as I lost consciousness the first time, doesn't that mean I'll only have-"

"Doesn't matter... Two... One... Go. Go!"

"...I hate closed-loop time travel."

He went.

* * *

"Up, come on, get up. Sorry Jack, but you need to hurry, I left it a little longer but the window of opportunity is still narrow."

"I... I don't need... can't you just... oh god not again. What is this, the third time? What happened?" Jack Potter tilted his body and fell, with great precision, off the sofa. He lay face-up in a beam of weak sunlight. "Feels like I was... what was it? Rampaged... by a... rhinoceros. Again. Has there been a... mass escape from London Zoo?"

"Come on, drink this."

"Ugh... Moony, my throat still hurts, do I have to... I won't be tasting anything but peppermint for _days_... gluh... I wasn't drinking _this_ time, was I?" Jack finished the flask of Pepper-up Potion in between half-sensical mutters.

"No." Remus unfolded his arms. "And before you ask, yes, you just brewed that one, too."

"But I'm gone," Jack said lucidly through a cloud of peppermint steam, staring at the sofa opposite.

"No, the other you."

"But that was me."

"The other other you."

"How many of me are there?"

"Don't ask. It's not worth it."

"If I die of Pepper-up overdose because of you, Moony, I'm going to haunt the shit out of you." Jack staggered to his feet.

"Okay. Where are you going?"

"Out to the garden, to go seven hours back in time."

"What? No."

"But when I went back in the garden the first time, there were two of me unconscious at my feet. And then there was the time I had to drink that _other_ potion, but that was inside. So this must be time for me to pass out in the garden again."

"No. That must be some other time. Right now, you need to go to the spare room, and go eight hours back. Take these instructions and only read them when you get there."

Jack took the slip of paper resignedly. "But that gives me time to spare before I need to finish the spell. I'll need to take my invisibility cloak so I won't be seen. And why the spare room?"

"Albus said so. He'll be waiting for you when you arrive. Oh, and take this. By the sounds of it, you've already drank it. But you forgot to give it to me to give to you earlier, so you have to take it back to leave on the table for you to pick up and give to me."

"...I hate closed-loop time travel."

* * *

"Argh... blargh... oh." Jack lay still and looked at the ceiling for a while. "So I'm in the kitchen this time."

"It was the only internally consistent way to do it." Remus folded his arms and held out a flask, which Jack regarded with loathing, then accepted.

"I don't know which I hate more: myself, for plotting all this, or Pepper-up Potion, for fuelling it. What time is it?"

"You don't really need to know."

"I suppose not. Instructions? Thanks."

Jack swung his legs down from the table, onto the floor. "Any idea why I had to drink a potion I don't remember brewing, to knock myself, instead of using up all my magic and falling unconscious? I mean, that still has to happen, doesn't it?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. But one of you said that you made a mistake with your calculations. You had to fall unconscious a total of three times because you had already woken up three times. This one should be the last, which means that piece of paper should make everything clear."

"Bets?"

"Nope." Remus grinned.

"Okay. Where do I have to be?"

"In the garden again, and you have to go back the full eight hours."

"Do I get to actually finish the spell this time?"

"I assume so."

"Yeah, I think I get this now. So then I'll brew the potions I must have already given you, to give to _me_ at various points... including the knock-out one I remember having to both take back and collect because I forgot to give it to you... except now I have to remember to forget to give it to you."

Jack looked down at his watch wearily. "So I'll have to go back once more to pick that up again and give to you, and pretend to be the _other_ me that doesn't get knocked out, and hide from him. And that will put me the earliest in my timeline I've been, and then I'll be the me that doesn't cast the charm or brew the potions, but just hides somewhere until this is all over.."

Jack and Remus looked at each other. "...I hate closed-loop time travel," they chorused.

* * *

"Remus, you need to take this time-turner and note, and go back six hours. You'll need to give it to the only conscious me at that time, so I can give it to you. Then you'll need to hide for six hours."

"Why?"

"I forgot to give me the note to give to you to give to me to say to leave the potion to leave on the table, since I forgot I already forgot to give it to you in the first place. Oh, and I've been thinking - you'll need to call Sirius a blast-ended screwball at some point, since I remember you telling me you don't remember doing that and _I_ don't remember telling any version of you to do it, and this is presumably the last version of me. So unless we used polyjuice potion, and there's no more up-to-date version of me that has sent me any instructions at any point of time to that effect, I guess it has to be you who does it. And then hide after _that_."

Remus opened his mouth, but Jack wasn't finished.

"Also, don't forget to tell me to tell you to tell the third me, when he wakes up, that he forgot to give the potion to you to give to me earlier, and that he'll have to take it back to leave on the table for me to pick up and give to you. And one last thing, I forgot to include in the instructions to the fourth version of me, an instruction to copy out the instructions for the second version to give to you to give to me, so you'll need to take this other slip and switch the papers at some point while he's unconscious."

"...Please tell me you're kidding."

* * *

"I don't see what you're whining about," Sirius grumbled, flicking through the sheaf of parchment. "_I'm_ the one who has to sign all of these in blood, with blah blah blah about intent and soundness of mind and all of that. My own blood! It hurts! And there's like a dozen places to initial, on top of that!"

He glared at the end of the blood quill.

"_You_ just have to wander around time doing pointless things and drinking potions. It's a picnic in comparison."

Jack stared at him. "Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure, Padfoot. It's a walk in the park. So why don't I go get some polyjuice potion, and we can do a swap."

Sirius wrinkled his nose. "Nah. I don't know what happens to polyjuiced blood when you change back again, but I'd hate for it to invalidate these bloody forms. Uh, no pun intended."

Jack gave him a piercing look from the chair opposite. "And if you did start time-travelling, the urge to deliberately try to stuff it up would be too great."

"...And the urge to deliberately try to stuff it up would be too great, yeah, yeah." Sirius abruptly dropped the quill and jerked his head towards the door. "Footsteps, someone coming upstairs. Do you need to hide?"

"Nah. All the instruction papers except the one I'm currently following – even the ones I had to copy out but not carry out – say to stay out of the library all day. I figure that means I'm safe to hide out here, as current me."

"Huh. Brandy?"

"Better not. I'm sure there's more Pepper-up to come, and that could be a nasty combination."

Remus stuck his head through the doorway. "Oh, good, you're drinking. Apparently I need to hide out in here all day."

"What? But there's still instructions I haven't given you to give to me when I wake up, yet."

Remus lifted the time-turner from around his neck and grimaced.

"...Ah. Brandy, then?"

* * *

"Where's Hermione?" Sirius asked after a while, rubbing his bleeding arm absently.

"Staying in," she answered briskly from the locket inside Jack's shirt.

"Why?"

"Headache."

"She tried to move into one of her other portraits in the house," Jack explained, closing his eyes wearily. "Apparently that doesn't work when you're a time-turned version of yourself. The non-travelling version is watching Young Harry."

"Well, as long as someone is," Remus frowned. "Wait, no, I remember looking in all day and he was fine. So the, uh, other me was – is – looking in. But he's not meant to know about this me yet until he goes back in time and becomes me, so I can't check that he is."

"But you remember it, so he already has. Or will."

Sirius looked between the two of them with a pained look. "I think I'll stick to just mutilating myself with this stupid traditional quill. Somebody explain why I'm the one filing the adoption papers, anyway?"

Remus nodded, putting down his glass. "Jack's existence is an anomaly, and the papers he's presumably _going_ to get will be quasi-legal."

"Dumbledore mentioned something about that this morning..."

"I know. You told me."

"Ah. But I haven't yet."

"But you will, earlier. Make sure you remember to."

"But..."

"Shut up shut up shut up. What about Remus?" Sirius asked.

"He'd be shafted by the current werewolf legislation," Jack said, frowning. "And even if he wasn't, we're talking about _me_ – sorry, about _Harry Bloody Potter_ here. Pretty much any attempt to adopt him is going to be challenged. Since you're actually his godfather, you've got the only truly unassailable claim."

Sirius shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Harry..."

"Jack."

"Jack, but Harry for now... I want to apologise for getting myself sent to Azkaban, and leaving you to the Dursleys. And for my future self's stupidity too. I completely abandoned you. I was a terrible godfather."

"Padfoot, I forgive you, and your now-nonexistent future self. For that matter, I forgave you in the nonexistent future. And now we can make sure that Young Harry has a nicer life. And, you know, save pretty much the whole world too. But actually-" Jack leaned forward to look Sirius squarely in the eye - "I do have one _very important_ thing to ask you, which, as my sort-of-godfather, you _must_ tell me."

"What is it?"

"Was that box of 'toys' hidden in the wine cellar, yours?"

Sirius blinked. "'toys'?"

"Yes, 'toys'. Colourful, leather and rubber, feathers and chains _toys_."

"You're saying..."

"Yeah."

"No. Merlin, no. In the wine cellar?"

"Yeah. Kreacher didn't claim them, so I suppose they were your little brother's, then..."

"Oh god! Oh no! I don't want to know, I don't want to know..."

"Or possibly your mother's."

Sirius began dry-retching.

Lupin smiled faintly. "What did you do with them? I'm just asking," he added hastily at Harry's incredulous look.

"Wrapped them in a parcel with an automatic unpacking charm and sent them to Snape. I can only hope he opened it at the breakfast table."

* * *

**Author's notes:**

→ Here it is, back after a long delay. I've also done some very minor edits on all the previous chapters. There may still be delays with the fic as I acclimatise to postgraduate study.

→ Time-turners pretty clearly work via closed time loops in canon. So you can't alter the past, fullstop. But who's to say that, when something terrible happens, you can't just go back in time, stop it happening, and confund yourself to _think_ it happened? Or use magic to create an illusion of it happening? That would be completely consistent. And it will be a convenient defence to use if I accidentally mess up any timey wimey stuff in this story.

→ I like reviews, and read them all, even if I don't often reply to them.


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